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THE 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 



PRINTED BY S. HAMILTON, 
WEYBRIDGE, SURREY. 



'"*'• •£&*, 



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THE 



FEAST OF THE POETS, 



WITH 



OTflEJt PIECES IN VERSE, 



■■AV&fc.i, LEIGH HUNT. 



Otov % 'jiO'^TroXXwyo; ecrsiaaro Boupvivog *opirrfe y 
Oiol 8 okov '"•'?"& ■pLshot.% pov exoig, sxotg, ocrrtg aX/rpoj, 
Ka; 5>j flw^./ra QvpeTpa, xaXw 7ro8; Qoiftog oLQotacrti. 

Callimachus. 



SECOND EDITION, 

AMENDED AND ENLARGED. 






LdSl^ON: 
PRINTED FOR GALE AND FENNER, 

PATERNOSTER-ROW. ' - * 
1815. 



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</-*/* 






DEDICATION. 



TO THOMAS MITCHELL, ESQ. 

LATE FELLOW OF SYDNEY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 

MY DEAR MITCHELL, 

Allow me to surprise you with a Dedica- 
tion. It is not quite so disinterested a one 
as you may imagine, for it is a cheap way of 
paying my debts for many an hour of enjoy- 
ment in health, and refreshment in sickness ; 
and besides, I wish to show that alarming 
body of people, called " some persons," that 
the most unaccommodating politician need 
not absolutely want friends, and warm ones, 



DEDICATION. 

even among those who have minds of their 
own. You and I differ upon more than one 
point of importance, publicas well as private; 
but on the subject of poetry, with some little 
exception perhaps as to your old friend Ben 
Jonson, we are generally agreed ; and no two 
persons can be more firmly persuaded, that 
there is but one thing happier than friend- 
ship, and nothing better than principle. 

Yours most sincerely, 

LEIGH HUNT. 

January 10th, 1814. 



PREFACE 



THE SECOND EDITION. 



Like most of the poetical inventions of modern times, 
the idea of Apollo's holding sessions and elections is of 
Italian origin ; but having been hitherto treated in its 
most ordinary light, with the degradation of the God 
into a mere critic or chairman, it has hitherto received 
none of those touches of painting, and combinations of 
the familiar and fanciful, of which it appears so provoca- 
tive, and which the present trifle is an attempt to sup- 
ply. The pieces it has already produced in our lan- 
guage, are the c Sessions of the Poets' by Sir John 
Suckling, another * Session' by an anonymous author in 
the first volume of ' State Poems,' the c Trial for the 
Bays ' by Lord Rochester, and the ' Election of a 



viii PREFACE TO 

Poet Laureat' by Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham. 
They are for the most part vulgar and poor ; though 
Suckling and Rochester, it is evident, could have done 
much better had they pleased. But there is a strange 
affectation of slovenliness about the lower species of 
satire in those times, which appears to have been mis- 
taken for a vigorous negligence or gallant undress. 

The attempt above-mentioned has met with the ap- 
probation of the public ; and the little poem, which is 
now brought to a second edition, would have made its 
reappearance earlier, but for a series of occupations and 
indispositions, which are at once the best and most un- 
explainable of excuses. The text has again been in- 
creased ; and three poets added to the dining-table, 
whom the author could give no sufficient reason for not 
having seated before. One of them indeed he had 
already declared in the notes, to be, in his opinion, the 
first poet of the day ; another, in the same place, he had 
mentioned as of kindred genius ; and the third he had 
only omitted in the text, because it was originally writ- 
ten without him. If these are very bad explanations, 



THE SECOND EDITION. ix 

they are like many other bad things, very true ones ; 
and the Author can only hope, that the additions may 
be found entertaining enough to do away any very rigid 
inquiries as to their previous non-appearance. 

As to the principal poet alluded to, the Author does 
not scruple to confess, that his admiration of him has 
become greater and greater between every publication 
of i The Feast of the Poets.' He has become a con- 
vert, not indeed to what he still considers as his faults, 
but, to use a favourite phrase of these times, to the 
" immense majority'' of his beauties ; — and here, it 
seems to him, lies the great mistake, which certain in- 
telligent critics persist in sharing with others of a very 
different description. It is to be observed, by the way, 
that the defects of Mr, Wordsworth are the result of 
theory, not incapacity; and it is with their particular 
effect on those most calculated to understand him that 
we quarrel, rather than with any thing else. But taking 
him as a mere author to be criticised, the writers in 
question seem to regard him as a stringer of puerilities, 
who has so many faults that you can only wonder now 



x PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 

and then at his beauties ; whereas the proper idea of 
him is that of a noble poet, who has so many beauties 
that you are only apt now and then, perhaps with no 
very great wisdom, to grow impatient at his faults. 

July 11th, 1815. 



CONTENTS. 



FEAST OF THE POETS - - - - I 

NOTES TO THE FEAST 27 

TRANSLATIONS, SONNETS, &C. 

CATULLUS'S RETURN HOME 135 

CATULLUS TO CORNIFICIUS 137 

CATULLUS'S ACME AND SEPTIMIUS 138 

HORACE'S ODE TO PYRRHA 142 

PART OF A CHORUS IN SENECA'S TRAGEDY OF 

THYESTES - - - 145 

HOMER'S BACCHUS, OR THE PIRATES 151 

SONNET TO THOMAS BARNES, ESQ. 156 

TO HAMPSTEAD 157 

, TO THE SAME - - 158 

TO THE SAME 159 

TO T. M. ALSAGER, ESQ. with the author's 

MINIATURE, ON LEAVING PRISON ----------160 

TO HAMPSTEAD 161 

TO THE SAME 162 

POLITICS AND POETICS - - - 163 

SONG - . - 172 

NATIONAL SONG - 173 

A THOUGHT ON MUSIC 175 



THE 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 



1 other day, as Apollo sat pitching his darts 

Through the clouds of November, by fits and by starts, 

He began to consider how long it had been, 

Since the bards of Old England had all been rung in. 

6 I think,' said the God, recollecting, (and then 

He fell twiddling a sunbeam as I may my pen, ) 

* I think — let me see — yes, it is, I declare, 

As long ago now as that Buckingham there : l 

And yet I can't see why I 've been so remiss, 

Unless it may be — and it certainly is, 

That since Dryden's fine verses, and Milton's sublime, 

I have fairly been sick of their sing-song and rhyme. 

B 



2 THE FEAST OF 

There was Collins, His true, had a good deal to say ; 
But the rogue had no industry, — neither had Gray : 
And Thomson, though best in his indolent fits, 
Either slept himself weary, or bloated his wits. 2 
But ever since Pope spoil'd the ears of the town 
With his cuckoo-song verses, half up and half down, 
There has been such a doling and sameness, — by Jove, 
I'd as soon have gone down to see Kemble in love. 3 
However, of late as they've rous'd them anew, 
I'll e'en go and give them a lesson or two, 
And as nothing's done there now-a-days without eating, 
See what kind of set I can muster worth treating.' 
So saying, the God bade his horses walk for'ard,- 
And leaving them, took a long dive to the nor'ard : 
For Gordon's he made ; and as Gods who drop in do, 
Came smack on his legs through the drawing-room window. 

And here I could tell, if it was'nt for stopping, 
How all the town shook as the godhead went pop in, 
How bright look'd the poets, and brisk blew the airs, 
And the laurels took flow'r in the gardens and squares ; — 
But fancies like these, though I've stores to supply me, 
I'd better keep back for a poem I've by me, 



THE POETS, • 

And merely observe that the girls look'd divine, 

And the old folks in-doors exclaimed * Bless us how fine!' 

Apollo, arriv'd, had no sooner embodied 
His essence ethereal, than quenching his godhead, 
He chang'd his appearance — to — what shall I say ? 
To a young gallant soldier returning in May ? 
No — that's a resemblance too vapid and low : — 
Let's see — to a finish'd young traveller ? — No : 
To a graceful young lord just stept out of his carriage ? 
Or handsome young poet, the day of his marriage ? 
No, — nobody's likeness will help me, I see, 
To afford you a notion of what he could be, 
Not though I collected one pattern victorious 
Of all that was good, and accomplish'd, and glorious, 
From deeds in the daylight, or books on the shelf, 
And call'd up the shape of young Alfred himself. 4 

Imagine, however, if shape there must be, 
A figure sublim'd above mortal degree, 
His limbs the perfection of elegant strength, — 
A fine flowing roundness inclining to length, — 
A back dropping in, — an expansion of chest, 
(For the God, you'll observe, like his statues was drest) 

b2 



4 THE FEAST OF 

His throat like a pillar for smoothness and grace, 

His curls in a cluster, — and then such a face, 

As mark'd him at once the true offspring of Jove, 

The brow all of wisdom, and lips all of love ; 

For though he was blooming, and oval of cheek, 

And youth down his shoulders went smoothing and sleek, 

Yet his look with the reach of past ages was wise, 

And the soul of eternity thought through his eyes. 

I would'nt say more, lest my climax should lose ; — 
Yet now I have mentioned those lamps of the Muse, 
I can't but observe what a splendour they shed, 
When a thought more than common came into his head : 
Then they leap'd in their frankness, deliciously bright, 
And shot round about them an arrowy light ; 
And if, as he shook back his hair in its cluster, 
A curl fell athwart them and darken'd their lustre, 
A sprinkle of gold through the duskiness came, 
Like the sun through a tree, when he's setting in flame. 

The God, then, no sooner had taken a chair, 
And rung for the landlord to order the fare, 
Than he heard a strange noise and a knock from without, — 
And scraping and bowing, came in such a rout ! 



THE POETS. 5 

There was Arnold, and Reynolds, and Dibdin, and Cherry, 
All grinning as who should say, ' Shan't we be merry ?' 
And Hook, who had come with an absolute tear up, 
And sweet Billy Dimond, a patting his hair up. 
The God, for an instant, sat fix'd as a stone, 
Till recov'ring, he said in a good-natur'd tone, 

* Oh, the waiters, I see ; — ah, it's all very well, — 
Only one of you'll do just to answer the bell/ 
But lord ! to see all the great dramatists' faces ! 
They look'd at each other, and made such grimaces ! 
Then turning about, left the room in vexation, 

And Hook, they say, could'nt help mutt'ring 'Damnation !' 

'Twas lucky for Colman he was'nt there too, 

For his pranks would have certainly met with their due, 

And Sheridan's also, that finished old tricker ; — 

But one was in prison, and both were in liquor. 5 

The God fell a laughing to see his mistake, 
But stopp'd with a sigh for poor Comedy's sake ; 
Then gave mine host orders, who bow'd to the floor, 
And presented three cards that were brought to the door: 
Apollo just gave them a glance with his eye, 

* Spencer— Rogers — Montgom'ry,' — and putting them by, 



6 THE FEAST OF 

Begg'd the landlord to give his respects to all three, 

And say he'd be happy to see them to tea. 6 

1 Your Majesty, then,' said the Gaius, < don't know 
That a person nam'd Crabbe has been waiting below ? 
He has taken his chair in the kitchen, they say.' 
4 Indeed !' said Apollo, ' Oh pray let him stay : 
He'll be much better pleased to be with 'em down stairs, 
And will find ye all out with your cookings and cares : — 
But mind that you treat him as well as you're able, 
And let him have part of what goes from the table.' 7 

A soft, smiling voice then arose on the ear, 
As if some one from court was about to appear : — 
6 Oh, this is the room, my good friend ? Ah, I see it is ; — 
Room, sure enough, for the best-bred of deities! 5 
Then came a whisper, — and then was a hush, — 
And then, with a sort of a look of a blush, 
Came in Mr. Hayley, all polish'd confusion, 
And said, ' Will Apollo excuse this intrusion ? 
I mighthave kept back, — but I thought 'twould look odd, — 
And friendship, you know,— pray how is my dear God?' 
A smile, followed up by a shake of the head, 
Cross'd the fine lip of Phoebus, who view'd him, and said,-^- 



THE POETS. 7 

4 I'll give you a lesson, Sir, quite your own seeking, 
And one that you very much want — on plain speaking. 
Pray have you to learn, — and at this time of day, 
That your views on regard have been all the wrong way ? 
One ten thousandth part of the words and the time 
That you've wasted on praises instead of your rhyme, 
Might have gained you a title to this kind of freedom ; 
But volumes of endings, lugg'd in as you need 'em, 
Of hearts and imparts^ where's the soul that can read 
'em ? ' § f 

So saying, his eye so alarmingly shone, 
That ere it could wink, the poor devil was gone. 

A hem was then heard, consequential and snapping, 
And a sour little gentleman walk'd with a rap in. 
He bow'd, look'd about him, seem'd cold, and sat down, 
And said, ( I'm surprised that you'll visit this town :— 
To be sure, there are one or two of us who know you, 
But as for the rest, they are all much below you. 
So stupid, in gen'ral, the natives are grown, 
They really prefer Scotch reviews to their own ; 
So that what with their taste, their reformers, and stuff, 
They have sicken'd myself and my friends long enough.' 



8 THE FEAST OF 

* Yourself and your friends !' cried the God in high glee ; 

1 And pray, my frank visitor, who may you be ?' 

' Who be ?' cried the other; < why really — this tone — 

William GifFord's a name, I think, pretty well known !' 

' Oh — now I remember,' said Phoebus ; — c ah true — 

My thanks to that name are undoubtedly due : 

The rod, that got rid of the Cruscas and Lauras, — 

That plague of the butterflies, — sav'd me the horrors ; 

The Juvenal too stops a gap in one's shelf, 

At least in what Dry den has not done himself; 

And there's something, which even distaste must respect, 

In the self-taught example, that conquer'd neglect. 

But not to insist on the recommendations 

Of modesty, wit, and a small stock of patience, 

My visit just now is to poets alone, 

And not to small critics, however well known.' 

So saying he rang, to leave nothing in doubt, 

And the sour little gentleman bless'd himself out. 9 

Next came W T alter Scott with a fine weighty face, 
For as soon as his visage was seen in the place, 
The diners and barmaids all crowded to know him, 
And thank him with smiles for that sweet pretty poem ! 



*■ THE POETS. 9 

However, he scarcely had got through the door, 
When he look'd adoration, and bow'd to the floor, 
For his host was a God,— what a very great thing ! 
And what was still greater in his eyes, — a King ! 10 
Apollo smil'd shrewdly, and bade him sit down 
With ' Well, Mr. Scott, you have manag'd the town ; 
Now pray, copy less, — have a little temerity, — 

-Try if you can't also manage posterity. 

All you add now only lessens your credit ; 

And how could you think too of taking to edite ? 

A great deal's endur'd, where there's measure and rhyme; 

But prose such as your's is a pure waste of time, — 

A singer of ballads unstrung by a cough, 

Who fairly talks on, till his hearers walk off. 

Be original, man ; study more, scribble less ; 

Nor mistake present favour for lasting success ; 

And remember, if laurels are what you would find, 

The crown of all triumph is freedom of mind. u 

' And here,' cried Apollo, ' is one at the doo*^ 
Who shall prove what I say, or my art is no more. 
Ah, Campbell, you're welcome: — well, how have you been, 
Since the last time I saw you on Sydenham-green i 



10 THE FEAST OF 

I need not ask after the plans you've in view ; 
'Twould be odd, I believe, if I had'nt them too : 
But there's one thing I've always forgotten to mention, — 
Your versification, — pray give it invention. 
A fancy like yours, that can play its own part, 
And clip with fine fingers the chords of the heart, 
Should draw from itself the whole charm of its song, 
Nor put up with notes, that to others belong.' 12 

The poet to this was about to reply, 
When Moore, coming in, caught the Deity's eye, 
Who gave him his hand, and said, ' Show me a sight 
That can give a divinity sounder delight, 
Or that earth should more prize from its core to the poles, 
Than the seif-improv'd morals of elegant souls. 
Repentant I speak it, — though when I was wild, 
My friends should remember the world was a child, — 
That customs were diff'rent, and young people's eyes 
Had no better examples than those in the skies. 
But soon as I learnt how to value these doings, 
I never much valued your billings and cooings ; 
They only make idle the best of my race ; 
And since my poor Daphne turn'd tree in my face, 



THE POETS. 11 

There are very few poets, whose caps or whose curls 
Have obtained such a laurel by hunting the girls. 
So it gives me, dear Tom, a delight beyond measure, 
To find how you've mended your notions of pleasure ; 
For never was poet, whose fanciful hours 
Could bask in a richer abstraction of bowers, 
With sounds and with spirits, of charm to detain 
The wonder-eyed soul in their magic domain ; 
And never should poet, so gifted and rare, 
Pollute the bright Eden Jove gives to his care, 
But love the fair Virtue, for whom it is given, 
And keep the spot pure for the visits of heaven.' 13 

He spoke with a warmth, but his accent was bland, 
And the poet bow'd down with a blush to his hand, 
When Byron relieved him by taking his place, 
Which he did with so kind yet unconscious a face, 
So ardent a frankness, yet modest an ease, 
As much as to say ** Now for me, if you please," — 
That Apollo took his hand, and earnestly said, 
* Pray how came misanthropy into your head ? 
I suspect (it is true), that in all which you tell us 
Of robbers, and rakes, and such terrible fellows, 



12 THE FEAST OF 

There's something mere scorn could have never devis'd, 

And a sorrow-wise charity roughly disguis'd ; 

But you must not be always indulging this tone ; 

You owe some relief to our hearts and your own ; 

For poets, earth's heaven-linking spirits, were born, 

What they can, to amend, — what they can't, to adorn ; 

And you hide the best proof of your office and right, 

If you make not as I do a contrast with night, 

And help to shed round you a gladness and light. 

So remember ; and as to the style of your song, 

And to strait-forward speaking, 'twill come before long : 

But the fact is, that what with your courts and your 

purses, 
I 've never done well with you lords who write verses : 
I speak not of people like Sheffield or Lansdowne, 
Whom some silly Body of Poetry hands down, — 
But Rochester raked himself into his grave ; 
A poor sceptred scoundrel slew Surrey the brave ; 
And Sackville stopped short of his better ambition, 
And lost a great name in the shrewd politician. 
I wouldn't divorce, mind, the muse from the state ; 
Great poets have been politicians as great; 



THE POETS. 13- 

Let both be combined as becomes a true Briton, 
And laurels add weight to the bench that you sit on ; 
I love a free spirit ; its fancy is free ; 
But so much the more you and I must agree.' 14 

He smiled ; and his Lordship shook hands as before, 
And was turning about to say something to Moore, 
When all on a sudden, there rose on the stairs 
A noise as of persons with singular airs ; 
You'd have thought 'twas the Bishops or Judges a 

coming, 
Or whole court of Aldermen hawing and humming, 
Or Abbot, at least, with his ushers before, 
But 'twas only Bob Southey and two or three more. 15 

Bob walk'd at the head with a tatter'd bay crown, 
And look'd such a compound of courtier and clown, 
Such a thing of pure nature that should have been true, 
With such an assumption of tenfold his due, 
That a jerk took the eye-brows of every one there 
With a pleasant suspense 'twixt a smile and a stare ; 
When lo, as poor Bob was collecting his wit, 
The thing on his head, as if seiz'd with a fit, 
Began crackling, and splitting, and writhing about, 
And so in a flash and a vapour went out. 



14 THE FEAST OF 

I waive all attempt to describe how he colour'd, 
Winc'd, caper'd, and twirl'd, and cried < What's this I* 

and « Oh Lord!' 
With all his dilemmas, made worse by their chuckles, 
'Twixt easing his temples, and burning his knuckles: 
The circle, half-dying, scarce knew what to do, 
With all their good breeding, and handkerchiefs too, 
And Apollo, who laugh'd till the tears in his eyes 
Had quench'd the dread sparkle that caused the surprise, 
Said, * Nay, don't be frightened ; — there, help him a seat ; 
' His head's in no danger from that sort of heat.' 

Then breathing his laugh off, the God rais'd his chest, 
And look'd with a pain'd sort of pride at the rest ; 
For Coleridge had vex'd him long since, I suppose, 
By his idling, and gabbling, and muddling in prose ; 16 ' 
And Wordsworth, one day, made his very hairs bristle, 
By going and changing his harp for a whistle. ] ? 
The bards, for a moment, stood making a pause, 
And look'd rather awkward, and lax round the jaws, 
When one began spouting the cream of orations 
In praise of bombarding one's friends and relations ; 18 
And t'other some lines he had made on a straw, 
Showing how he had found it, and what it was for, 



THE POETS. m 

And how, when 'twas balanc'd, it stood like a spell ! — 
And how, when 'twas balanc'd no longer, it fell ! — 
A wild thing of scorn he describ'd it to be, 
But he said it was patient to heaven's decree : — 
Then he gaz'd upon nothing, and looking forlorn, 
Dropt a natural tear for that wild thing of scorn / 19 
Apollo half laughed betwixt anger and mirth, 
And cried, * Was there ever such trifling on earth ? 
What ! think ye a bard's a mere gossip, who tells 
Of the ev'ry-day feelings of every one else, 
And that poetry lies, not in something select, 
But in gath'ring the refuse that others reject ? 
Must a ballad doled out by a spectacled nurse 
About Two-Shoes or Thumb, be your model of verse ; 
And your writings, instead of sound fancy and style, 
Look more like the morbid abstractions of bile ? 
There is one of you here, who, instead of these fits, 
And becoming a joke to half-thinkers and wits, 
Should have brought back our fine old pre-eminent way, 
And been the first man at my table to day : 
But resolv'd as I am to maintain the partitions 
'Twixt wit and mere wildness, he knows the conditions ; 



16 THE FEAST OF 

And if he retains but a spark of my fire, 

Will show it this instant, — and blush, — and retire/ 

He spoke ; and poor Wordsworth, his cheeks in a glow, 

(For he felt the God in him) made symptoms to go, 

When Apollo, in pity, to screen him from sight, 

Threw round him a cloud that was purple and white, 

The same that of old us'd to wrap his own shoulders, 

When coming from heaven, he'd spare the beholders : 

'Twas culled from the east, at the dawning of day, 

In a bright show'ry season 'twixt April and May. 

Yet the bard was no sooner obeying his king, 

And gliding away like a shadow of spring, 

Than the latter, who felt himself touch'd more and more 

Tow'rds a writer whose faults were as one to five score, 

And who found that he shouldn't well know what to 

say, 
If he sent, after all, his best poet away, 
Said, * Come, my dear Will, — imperfections apart, — 
Let us have a true taste of our exquisite art ; 
You know very well you 've the key to my heart.' 

At this the glad cloud, with a soft heaving motion, 
Stopp'd short, like a sail in a nook of the ocean ; 



THE POETS. 17 

And out of its bosom there trembled and came 

A voice, that grew upwards, and gather' d like flame : 

Of nature it told, and of simple delights 

On days of green sunshine, and eye-lifting nights ; 

Of summer-sweet isles and their noon-shaded bowers, 

Of mountains, and valleys, trees, waters, and flowers, 

Of hearts, young and happy, and all that they show 

For the home that we came from and whither we go ; 

Of wisdom in age by this feeling renew'd, 

Of hopes that stand smiling o'er passions subdu'd, 

Of the springs of sweet waters in evil that lie ; — 

Of all, which, in short, meets the soul's better eye 

When we go to meek nature our hearts to restore, 

And bring down the Gods to walk with us once more. 

You may think what effect was produced by this strain : 
Apollo put on all his graces again, 
With face just inclining, and smiles that agreed ; 
And Scott look'd as who should say l Lofty indeed !' 
And Campbell, as if 'twould be stupid to doubt it ; 
And Bob, as if he, forsooth, knew all about it ; 
And Byron, as though he were wrapt in his place ; 
And Moore, as if pleasure had burst on his face ; 

c 



18 THE FEAST OF 

And all cried at last, with a passion sublime, 

t This, this is the Prince of the Bards of his Time !' 20 

So the cloud roll'd apart, and the poet came forth, 
And took his proud seat as was due to his worth ; 
And Apollo, who felt all his spirits restor'd, 
And would'nt, for trifles, make gaps at his board, 
Twitch'd Coleridge's ear, who stood yawning askew, 
And said, < There, you lazy dog, sit you down too/ 

6 And now,' said the God, — but he scarcely had spoken, 
When bang went the door — you'd have thought it was 

broken ; 
And in rush'd a mob with a scuffle and squeeze, 
Exclaiming, * What! Wordsworth, and fellows like these ! 
' Nay then, we may all take our seats as we please !' 
I can't, if I would, tell you who they all were ; 
The names have escap'd me ; but Wharton was there, 
Besides a whole host of pretenders and slaves, 
And parsons turn'd bullies, and brief-begging knaves. 
The God smiled at first with a turn tow'rds the fire, 
And whisper'd 6 There, tell 'em they'd better retire ;' 
But lord ! this was only to set all their quills up ; 
The rogues did but bustle ; and pulling their frills up, 



THE POETS. 19 

Stood fixing their faces, and stirr'd not an inch ; 
Nay, some took their snuff out, and join'd in a pinch, 

Then wrath seiz'd Apollo ; and turning again, 
' Ye rabble,' he cried, < common-minded and vain, 
Whate'er be the faults which true bards may commit, 
( And most of 'em lie in your own want of wit, ) 
Ye shall try, wretched creatures, how well ye can bear 
What such only witness, unsmote with despair/ 

He said ; and the place all seem'd swelling with light, 
While his locks and his visage grew awfully bright ; 
And clouds, burning inward, roll'd round on each side, 
To encircle his state, as he stood in his pride ; 
Till at last the full Deity put on his rays, 
And burst on the sight in the pomp of his blaze ! 
Then a glory beam'd round, as of fiery rods, 
With the sound of deep organs and chorister gods ; 
And the faces of bards, glowing fresh from their skies, 
Came thronging about with intentness of eyes,^- 
And the Nine were all heard, as the harmony swell'd, — 
And the spheres, pealing in, the long rapture upheld, — 
And all things, above, and beneath, and around, 
Seem'd a world of bright vision, set floating in sound. 

c2 



20 THE FEAST OF 

That sight and that music might not be sustained 
But by those who a hold on true feeling had gain'd ; 
And even the bards who had graciousness found, 
After gazing awhile, bow'd them down to the ground. 
What then could remain for that feeble-eyed crew ? 
Through the door in an instant they rush'd and they 

flew, 
They rush'd, and they dash'd, and they scrambled, and 

stumbled, 
And down the hall staircase distractedly tumbled, 
And never once thought which was head or was feet, 
And slid through the hall, and fell plump in the street. 
So great was the panic that smote them to flight, 
That of all who had come to be feasted that night, 
Not one ventur'd back, or would stay near the place; 
Even Croker declin'd, notwithstanding his face ; 
And old Peter Pindar turn'd pale, and suppress'd, 
With a death-bed sensation, a blasphemous jest. 21 

But Phoebus no sooner had gain'd his good ends, 
Than he put off his terrors, and rais'd up his friends, 
Who stood for a moment, entranc'd to behold 
The glories subside and the dim-rolling gold, 



THE POETS. 21 

And listen'd to sounds, that with ecstasy burning 
Seem'd dying far upward, like heaven returning. 
Then c Come/ cried the God in his elegant mirth, 
* Let us make us a heav'n of our own upon earth, 
And wake with the lips, that we dip in our bowls, 
That divinest of music, — congenial souls.' 
So saying, he led through the door in his state, 
And seating the poets, cried < Laurels for eight !' 
No sooner demanded, than lo! they were there, 
And each of the bards had a wreath in his hair. 
Lord Byron's with turk's-cap and cypress was mix'd, 
And Scott's with a thistle, with creeper betwixt ; 
And Wordsworth's with celandin, aloe, and pine ; 
And, Bob, penny-royal and blow-ball with thine; 
Then Sam's with mandragoras, fearful to wear; 
With willow Tom Campbell's, and oak here and there ; 
And lastly, with shamrock from tear-bedew'd shores, 
And with vine-leaves and Jump-up-and-kiss-me, Tom 
Moore's. 22 

Then Apollo put his on, that sparkled with beams, 
And rich rose the feast as an epicure's dreams, — 
Not epicure civic, or grossly inclhVd, 
But such as a poet might dream ere he din'd ; 



£g THE FEAST OF 

For the God had no sooner determin'd the fare, 

That it turn'd to whatever was racy and rare : 

The fish and the flesh, for example, were done, 

On account of their fineness, in flame from the sun ; 

The wines were all nectar of different smack, 

To which Muskat was nothing, nor Virginis Lac, 

No, nor Lachryma Christi, though clearly divine, 

Nor Montepulciano, though King of all Wine. 23 

Then as for the fruits, you might garden for ages, 

Before you could raise me such apples and gages ; 

And all on the table no sooner were spread, 

Than their cheeks next the God blush'd a beautiful red. 

'Twas magic, in short, and deliciousness all ; — 

The very men-servants grew handsome and tall, 

To velvet-hung ivory the furniture turn'd, 

The service with opal and adamant burn'd, 

Each candlestick chang'd to a pillar of gold, 

While a bundle of beams took the place of the mould, 

The decanters and glasses pure diamond became, 

And the corkscrew ran solidly round into flame : — 

In a word, so completely forestalPd were the wishes, 

E'en harmony struck from the noise of the dishes. 



THE POETS. 23 

It can't be suppos'd I should think of repeating 
The fancies that flow'd at this laureat meeting ; 
I haven't the brains, and besides, was not there ; 
But the wit may be easily guess'd, by the chair : 
Suffice it to say, it was keen as could be, 
Though it soften'd to prettiness rather at tea. 

I must mention, however, that during the wine, 
The mem'ry of Shakspeare was toasted with nine ; 
When lo, as each poet was lifting his cup, 
A strain of invisible music struck up :— 
'Twas a mixture of all the most exquisite sounds 
To be heard upon earthly or fanciful grounds, 
When pomps or when passions their coming declare, 
Or there's something at work in the moonshiny air; 
For the trumpet sprang out, with a fierce-flowing blast, 
And the hautboys lamentingly mingled, and pass'd, 
Till a smile-drawing sweetness stole in at the close 
With the breathing of flutes and the smoothing of bows, 
And Ariel was heard, singing thinly and soft, 
Then with tricksy tenuity vanish'd aloft. 
The next name was Chaucer, — and part of the strain 
for the glorious old boy was play'd over again. 



24 THE FEAST OF 

Then c Milton !' they cried, with a solemner shout, 

When bursting at once in its mightiness out, 

The organ came gath'ring and rolling its thunder ; 

Yet wanted not intervals, calmer of wonder, 

Nor stops of low sweetness, like winds when they fall, 

Nor voices Elysian, that came with a call. 

Last follow'd my Spenser, (I wish I 'd been there !) 

And the light-neighing trumpet leap'd freshly on air, 

With preludes of flutes as to open a scene, 

And pipes with coy snatches that started between, 

Till sudden it stopp'd, — and you heard a dim strain, 

Like the shell of old Triton far over the main. 

'Twould be tedious to count all the names as they rose, 
But none were omitted, you'll eas'ly suppose, 
Whom Fancy has crown'd with one twig of the bay, 
From old Gawin Douglas to Shenstone and Gray. 
I must'nt forget though, that Bob, like a gander, 
Would give " a great genius," — one Mr. Landor; 24 
And Walter look'd up too, and begg'd to propose 
A particular friend of his, — one Mr. Rose : 2 * 
But the God look'd at Southey, and shrugging his shoulder, 
Cried, i When, my good friend, will you try to grow older I s 



THE POETS. 25 

Then nodding to Scott, he said, * Pray be as portly 

And rich as you please, but a little less courtly.' 

So, changing the subject, he call'd upon Moore, 

Who sung such a song, that they shouted < Encore !" 

And the God was so pleas'd with his taste and his tone, 

He obey'd the next call, and gave one of his own, — 

At which you'd have thought, — (Hwas so witching a warble,) 

The guests had all turn'd into listening marble ; 

The wreaths on their temples grew brighter of bloom, 

As the breath of the Deity circled the room ; 

And the wine in the glasses went rippling in rounds, 

As if follow'd and fann'd by the soft-winged sounds. 

Thus chatting and singing they sat till eleven, 
When Phoebus shook hands, and departed for heaven ; 
4 For poets,' he said, < who would cherish their powers, 
And hop'd to be deathless, must keep to good hours*' 26 
So off he betook him the way that he came, 
And shot up the north, like an arrow of flame ; 
For the Bear was his inn ; and the comet, they say, 
Was his tandem in waiting to fetch him away. 

The others then parted, all highly delighted ; 
And so shall I be, when you find me invited. 



NOTES 



ON THE 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 



1 / think — let me see— yes, it is, I declare, 
As long ago noto as that Buckingham there. 

Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire, one of the licen- 
tious dabblers in wit, who were educated in the court of 
Charles the Second. It would have appeared a great 
piece of insolence to this flimsy personage, who in a post- 
humous edition of his works is recommended to the care 
of " Time, Truth, and Posterity,'' to be told, that at the 
distance of a hundred years, it would be necessary to say 
who he was. His Grace, it is true, by favour of long 
standing, and of the carelessness or ignorance of compilers, 



28 NOTES ON THE 

still keeps his place in those strange medleys of good and 
bad, called Collections of English Poets ; but very few- 
persons know any thing of him ; and they who do, will 
hardly object to the tone of contempt with which Apollo 
speaks of a grave coxcomb, who affected to care nothing 
for the honours of either literature or the world, when he 
was evidently ambitious of both. In his Election of a 
Poet Laureat, where Pope, Prior, and others, are among 
the candidates, he thus modestly introduces himself: — 

When Buckingham came, he scarce car'd to be seen, 
Till Phcebus desir'd his old friend to walk in ; 
But a laureat peer had never been known, 
The commoners claim'd that place as their own. 

Yet if the kind God had been ne'er so inclined 
To break an old rule, yet he well knew his mind, 
Who of such preferment would only make sport, 
And laugh' d at all suitors for places at court. 

I may here, by the way, take notice of a strange piece of 
carelessness, which has escaped Mr. Walter Scott in his edi- 
tion of Dryden, and which, unless he had made eighteen 
volumes of it, might be construed into an ignorance of 
his author ; — at least, it does not exhibit to advantage his 
familiarity with the poets either of that age or the sue- 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 29 

ceeding one. As an additional argument to prove, that 
Dryden had no hand in Buckingham's vulgar Essay on 
Satire, he asks in a note on that passage 

To tell men freely of their foulest faults, 

To laugh at their vain deeds and vainer thoughts, 

" Would Dryden have pardoned such a rhyme !" It 
would appear so, for he used it repeatedly himself. Not 
to multiply instances, see the 2d part of the Conquest of 
Grenada, Act 2. Sc.l. — Act 3. Sc.l. — and Act 5. Sc. 2, — 
three times in one play. It was also used after him by 
Pope, Swift, and others, who affected to be conscien- 
tious rhymers ; and in fact, there was nothing in it to 
startle them ; for it appears by Johnson's Dictionary, 
that as late as fifty years back, the I m fault was not only 
dropt or retained at pleasure, but that " in conversation 
it was generally suppressed." It is curious, that one of 
the authorities, in which this pronunciation is exempli- 
fied, should be another passage from Dryden. 



30 NOTES ON THE 

2 And Thomson, though best in his indolent jits, 
Either slept himself weary, or bloated his tvits. 

In thinking it necessary to explain this passage, I only 
wish to deprecate all idea of disrespect to the memory 
of Thomson, — a man of a most cordial nature as well as 
of genius. The " bloated his wits" alludes to the re- 
dundant and tumid character of much of his principal 
poem, and the " slept himself weary" to his Castle of In- 
dolence, which certainly falls oif towards the conclusion, 
though it is exquisite for the most part, particularly in 
the outset. I would rather take my idea of Thomson as 
a poet from this little production than from all the rest of 
his works put together. There is more of invention in 
it, — more of unassisted fancy and abstract enjoyment ; 
and in copying the simplicity together with the quaint- 
nesses of a great poet, he became more natural, and 
really touched his subject with a more original freshness, 
than when he had his style to himself. 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 31 

3 But ever since Pope spoil 9 d the ears of the town 
With his cuckoo- song verses, half up and half 'down , &c. 

The charge against Pope of a monotonous and cloying 
versification is not new ; but his successors have found 
the style of too easy and accommodating a description to 
part with it; and readers in general, it must be con- 
fessed, have more than acquiesced in their want of am- 
bition. The late Dr. Darwin, whose notion of poetical 
music, in common with that of Goldsmith and others, 
was of the school of Pope, though his taste was other- 
wise different, was perhaps the first who, by carrying it 
to its extreme pitch of sameness, and ringing it affectedly 
in one's ears, gave the public at large a suspicion that 
there was something wrong in its nature. But of those 
who saw its deficiencies, part had the ambition without 
the taste or attention requisite for striking into a better 
path, and became eccentric in another extreme; while 
others, who saw the folly of both, were content to keep 
the beaten track and set a proper example to neither. 
By these appeals, however, the public ear has been ex- 



32 NOTES ON THE 

cited to expect something better ; and perhaps there never 
was a more favourable time than the present, for an at- 
tempt to bring back the real harmonies of the English 
heroic, and to restore to it half the true principle of its 
music, — variety. 

I am not here joining the cry of those, who affect tQ 
consider Pope as no poet at all. He is, I confess, in my 
judgment, at a good distance from Dryden, and at an im- 
measurable one from such men as Spenser and Milton ; 
but if the author of the Rape of the Lock, of Eloisa to 
Abelard, and of the Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady, is 
no poet, then are fancy and feeling no properties belong- 
ing to poetry. I am only considering his versification ; 
and upon that point I do not hesitate to say, that I re- 
gard him, not only as no master of his art, but as a very 
indifferent practiser, and one whose reputation will grow 
less and less, in proportion as the lovers of poetry become 
intimate with his great predecessors, and with the prin- 
ciples of musical beauty in general. Johnson, it is true, 
objects to those who judge of Pope's versification " by 
principles rather than perception/' treating the accusa- 
tion against him as a cant, and suspecting that the ac- 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 53 

cusers themselves " would have less pleasure in his works, 
if he had tried to relieve attention by studied discords, and 
affected to break his lines and vary his pauses." It is 
dangerous to hazard conclusions with regard to the opi- 
nions of others, upon matters of which our own senses 
have but imperfectly informed us. Johnson, by his own 
confession, had no ear ; and on this subject, as well as 
graver ones, might be inclined to resent opinions, which 
interfered with his self-love, or disturbed the preconceived 
notions upon which he had rested himself. Without 
dwelling therefore upon the praises which he has else- 
where bestowed upon these very varieties, and which we 
may reasonably suspect him of having pronounced upon 
the strength of the rule which he treats so contemptu- 
ously, * it ought to be recollected, that the principles of 
an art are nothing but the results of a general agreement, 
to which the finest perceptions have come respecting it ; 
and that the taste, which could be content to do without 



* See particularly the life of Dryden, where he praises that excellent 
versifier for knowing how " to vary his pauses and adjust his accents ;" and 
observes, that as " the essence of verse is regularity," so " its ornament 
is variety" 



34 NOTES ON THE 

variety in music or painting, would be thought very unfur- 
nished for criticism upon it, either on the score of principle 
or perception. 

The truth is, that perception has had nothing to do 
with the matter. The public ear was lulled into a want 
of thought on the subject ; the words music and harmony 
came to be tossed about with an utter forgetfulness of 
their meaning; and so contented and uninquisitive had 
every body become on this head, that even those who sat 
down for the express purpose of calling Mr. Pope's ad- 
mirers to a proper and smaller sense of his merits as a poet, 
were nevertheless equally agreed, that as a versifier his 
pre-eminence was not to be touched. * It was the same 

* See the Essay of Joseph Warton on his Genius and Writings. The 
Doctor seems to have had the same notions of poetic harmony as his brother 
Thomas, who thought that Milton, " notwithstanding his singular skill in 
music,'*" had " a very bad ear," and of whose beau ideal in versification I 
may here give an amusing instance. In the third book of the Faerie 
Queene, Canto 1. St. 14., is the following passage: — 

At length they came into a forest wyde, 

Whose hideous horror and sad trembling sound , 

Full griesly seem'd : — therein they long did ryde, 

Yet tract of living creature none they found, 

Save beares, lyons, and buls, which romed them around. 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 35 

indeed all over Europe. Voltaire, who agreeably to the 
genius of the French stage discovered Addison to be our 
greatest dramatic writer, could not fail also, agreeably to 



This last verse, says Warton, " would be improved in its harmony by 

reading, 

Save lyons, beares, and buls, &c. 

as would the following also, Book 5, Canto 2. St. 30. 

Yet was admired much oijboles, women, and boys, 
if we were to read 

Yet was admired much of women, fooles, and boys. 

But these corrections are made by the critic, upon a supposition that his 
author must have infallibly written what was best" The reader will recol- 
lect, that these lines are in the course of a very long poem ; yet so little had 
Warton's ear profited by his acquaintance with the Greek and Italian wri- 
ters as well as those of his own country, that he had obtained no perception 
of what is musical beyond that of mere smoothness. Upon this note Mr. 
Upton very justly observes, as far as the pause is concerned, that " as 
nothing is so tiresome as verse in the same unvaried measure and cadence, 
so the best poets, as Homer and Virgil among the ancients, Spenser and 
Milton among the moderns, often vary, not only in the pause of the verse, 
but likewise in the accent of the word. Hence our poet does not write 

Save lyons, beares, and buls, 
but 

Save beares, lyons, and buls. 

The reader may observe several of like sort, where the accent is varied 
and cadence changed, lest the ear should be tired with one unvaried same- 
ness of measure, like a ring of bells without any changes." 

d2 



36 NOTES ON THE 

the spirit of French verse in general, to pronounce that 
Pope was the most harmonious of our poets : — the Italians 
repeated the story, most likely from that want of informa- 
tion, with which critics are too apt to be satisfied, when 
they speak of the literature of other nations ; — and every 
where, in the writings of the last hundred years, we meet 
with nothing but the music and harmony of Pope, — in versi- 
fiers, in critics, in philosophers, in historians, in small men 
and great, in the Mallets, the Hayley s, the Masons, the John- 
sons, theWartons, Adam Smiths, and the Humes. The lat- 
ter description of writers, and indeed most of those who do 
not particularly cultivate a taste for poetry, as well as per- 
sons of every kind who are engaged in the busier pursuits 
of society, will most likely, for a long time to come, adhere 
to their love of Pope's versification, from the very principle 
which it wants, — that of contrast ; — they take up a poet 
for relaxation after their toils, are naturally guided to Pope 
by the tone of society which is mingled with his more 
poetical character, and finding their ear at its ease in 
common with the rest of their faculties, are content with 
the indolence it enjoys, and care not to enquire why it is 
satisfied. Besides, it is to be remembered, that the rhe- 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 37 

toricians as well as reasoners of the last century have in 
general formed their taste upon that of the French. 

If the attention, however, of more poetical readers is 
once roused to this point, they will find our author not 
merely deficient on the score of harmony, but to a degree 
apparently so obvious and at the same time so surprising, 
that they will be inclined to wonder how they could have 
endured so utter a want of variety, and will not be will- 
ing, in future, to listen to a poet of any pretensions, who 
shall come before them without a new stop or two to his 
lyre. — To come to particulars. — Let the reader take any 
dozen or twenty lines from Pope at a hazard, or if he 
pleases, from his best and most elaborate passages, and 
he will find that they have scarcely any other pauses than 
at the fourth or fifth syllable, and both with little varia- 
tion of accent. Upon these the poet is eternally drop- 
ping his voice, line after line, sometimes upon only one 
of them for eight or ten lines together ; so that when Vol- 
taire praised him for bringing down the harsh wranglings 
of the English trumpet to the soft tones of the flute,* he 

* Dictionnaire Philosophique, Art. Pope. — The reader will allow me to 
deprecate any application of these remarks on versification to the Feast of 



38 NOTES ON THE 

should have added, that he made a point of stopping every 
instant upon one or two particular notes. See, for in- 
stance, the first twenty lines of Windsor Forest, the two 
first paragraphs of Eloisa to Abelard, and that gorgeous 
misrepresentation of the exquisite moon-light picture in 
Homer. The last may as well be quoted : — 

As when the moon — refulgent lamp of night, 
O'er Heav'n's clear azure — spreads her sacred light, 
When not a breath — disturbs the deep serene, 
And not a cloud— -o'ercasts the solemn scene ; 
Around her throne — the vivid planets roll, 
And stars unnumber'd — gild the glowing pole ; 
O'er the dark trees — a yellower verdure shed, 
And tip with silver — ev'ry mountain's head; — 
Then shine the vales — the rocks in prospect rise, 
A flood of glory — bursts from all the skies : 
The conscious swains — rejoicing in the sight, 
Eye the blue vault — and bless the useful light. 



the Poets. The unambitious ballad-measure in which it is written, has not 
only had a particular time and tune annexed to it from time immemorial, 
so as to be led off like a kind of dance, but as the couplets are really made 
up of four lines thrown into two, may be allowed to appeal to its own laws, 
This however is a trifle not worth the settling. The chief merit which is 
expected in verses of this description is idiomatical easiness. 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 59 

Yet this is variety to the celebrated picture of Belinda 
in the Rape of the Lock : — 

Not with more glories — in th' ethereal plain 

The sun first rises — o'er the purpled main, 

Than issuing forth — the rival of his beams, 

Launch' d on the bosom — of the silver Thames. 

Fair nymphs and well-dress'd youths — around her shone, 

But ev'ry eye — was fix'd on her alone. 

On her white breast — a sparkling cross she wore 

Which Jews might kiss — and infidels adore. 

Her lively looks — a sprightly mind disclose, 

Quick as her eyes — and as unfix' d as those : 

Favours to none — to all she smiles extends ; 

Oft she rejects — but never once offends. 

Bright as the sun — her eyes the gazers strike, 

And like the sun — they shine on all alike. 

Yet graceful ease — and sweetness void of pride, 

Might hide her faults — if beltes had faults to hide : 

If to her share — some female errours fall, 

Look on her face — and you'll forget them alL 

This is a very brilliant description of a drawing-room 
heroine ; but what are the merits of its versification, which 
are not possessed by even Sternhold and Hopkins ? Out 
of eighteen lines, we have no less than thirteen in succes- 
sion which pause at the fourth syllable, — to say nothing 
of the four ies and the six os which fall together in the 



40 NOTES ON THE 

rhymes ; and the accent in all is so unskilfully managed, 
or rather so evidently and totally forgotten, that the ear 
has an additional monotony humming about it, — 

Quick as her eyes, 
Favours to none, 
'Oft she rejects, 
Bright as the sun. 

It does not follow that the critic who objects to this 
kind of sing-song, should be an advocate for other ex- 
tremes and for the affected varieties of which Johnson 
speaks. Let the varieties, like all the other beauties of 
a poet, be perfectly unaffected : but passion and fancy 
naturally speak a various language ; it is monotony and 
uniformity alone that are out of nature. When Pope, in 
one of his happy couplets, ridiculed the old fashion of 
gardening, he forgot that on principles common to all the 
arts, he was passing a satire on himself and his versifica- 
tion ; for who can deny, that in the walks of his Muse 

Grove nods at grove — each alley has its brother, 
And half the platform — just reflects the other? 

As the present notes are written for the poem to which 
they belong, not the poem for the notes, it is high time 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 41 

to finish the one before me ; otherwise I was much tempt- 
ed to conclude it with some counter examples of real 
poetic harmony from the verses of Dryden, Spenser, and 
Milton ; not that the style of any great writer is to be imi- 
tated at a venture, or to be studied with any direct view 
to imitation at all ; but because in the best effusions of 
those writers are to be found the happiest specimens of 
English versification, and such as with due regard to 
every man's own mode of thinking and speaking, might 
lead the poets of the present age to that proper mixture 
of sweetness and strength, — of modern finish and ancient 
variety, — from which Pope and his rhyming facilities have 
so long withheld us. 



4 Not though I collected one pattern victorious 
Of all that tvas good, and accomplish 9 d, and glorious , 
From deeds in the daylight, and books on the shelf, 
And call'd up the shape of young Alfred himself. 

A note upon Alfred might be indulged me, on the 
strength of his having been reckoned the " Prince of the 



42 NOTES ON THE 

Saxon Poets ;" but the name of that truly great man is 
not to be mentioned without enthusiasm by any constitu- 
tional Englishman, — that is to say, by any Englishman, 
who truckling to no sort of licentiousness, either of 
prince or people, would see the manliest freedom of a 
republic, adorned by the graces and quickened by the 
unity of a monarchy. — But to whom indeed, that has an 
admiration for any great or good quality, is not the me- 
mory of Alfred a dear one ? — a man, beloved in his home, 
feared by his enemies, venerated by his friends, — accom- 
plished in a day of barbarism, — anticipating the wisdom 
of ages, — self-taught, and what is more, self-corrected, — 
a Prince too, who subdued the love of pleasure,- — a 
Monarch, who with power to enslave, delighted to make 
free, — a Conqueror, who could stop short of the love of 
conquest, and sheath his sword the moment it had done 
enough, — a Sage, in short, who during the greatest part 
of a reign, in which he had practised every art of peace 
as well as war, of leisure as well as activity, — in which 
he had fought upwards of fifty pitched battles, had cleared 
his country from its invaders, and had established the 
foundation of those liberties, upon which we are at this 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 43 

moment enjoying our every-day comforts, had to struggle 
with a melancholy and agonizing disorder, which neither 
soured his temper nor interrupted his industry. If this 
is a character to make emulation despair, it is a character 
also to make despair itself patient, and to convert it into 
an invincible spirit. 

It is not generally known to the admirers of Alfred, 
that there is a life of him extant, written in Latin by one 
of his most familiar and intelligent friends, Asser of Saint 
David's, whom he had invited to court from a monastery. 
There is a good edition of it, and I believe, not a scarce 
one, by Francis Wise, who was Fellow of Trinity College, 
Oxford, and Assistant Librarian of the Bodleian*. The 
life is the more interesting, not only as it furnishes an 
authentic document for some of the most curious parti- 
culars, which our known historians have made popular, 
and for more which have been related by others, but in- 
asmuch as the author exhibits evident marks of his being 
a plain-spoken, impartial man, and with all his venera- 

* The one I have is an octavo, printed at Oxford in 1 722, but the first 
edition appears to have been in quarto. Asser was edited also by Camden 
and by Archbishop Parker. 



44 NOTES ON THE 

tion for Alfred, does not scruple to speak of the faults of 
his youth, and even to attribute his misfortunes to such 
causes as were likely to strike a churchman in that age. 
The substance of Asser is contained in the fourth and 
fifth books of Mr. Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons, 
where the reader will find a more copious and interesting 
account of Alfred, though written in a singular style, than 
id any other English performance. 

It is still however a disgrace to English biography, 
that there is no life of our unrivalled countryman, im- 
portant enough from the size and the composition to do 
him justice. The notices of Milton, Hume, and Burke, 
who like all other wise men, of all opinions and countries, 
have united to speak of him with one voice, are mere 
notices, however excellent of their kind. Little perhaps 
could be added to the facts of his story ; but they are of 
a nature to be rendered doubly interesting by proper 
management ; no subject, it is evident, could be more 
justly provocative of elegant reflection and illustration ; 
and a compact, lively volume, written by one who was 
learned enough to enter into the language of his hero, 
of taste enough to relish his accomplishments, and of 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 45 

knowledge and spirit enough to apprehend the real great- 
ness of his character, would be a treasure to be laid up 
in the heart of every Englishman, and tend to perpetuate 
those solid parts of our character, which are the only 
real preservatives of our glory. 



5 * Tivas lucky for Colman he tvas 9 ?zt there too, 
For his pranks ivould have certainly met with their due, 
And Sheridan 9 s also, thatjinished old triclcer ; — 
But one was in prison, and both were in liquor. 

It cannot be supposed, especially after my late situa- 
tion, that I should object to a man on the mere ground 
of his being circumscribed in his movements ; but it is 
pretty well known, I believe, that it is not plain-dealing 
which sent Mr. Colman to prison, nor any very great care 
for his honour which keeps him there. These are matters, 
however, upon which I am loth to touch, and therefore 
dismiss them. — The pertinacious ribaldry of Mr, Colman, 
and his affectation of regarding its reprovers as hypo- 
crites, — things which look more like the robust igno- 



46 NOTES ON THE 

ranee of a vulgar young rake, than the proceeding of 
even an old man of the world who is approaching his 
grave, — have met with their just reprobation from every 
reader of common sense. The truth is, that Mr. Colman 
the Younger, as he calls himself, has been prodigiously 
overrated in his time, partly perhaps from his real supe- 
riority to the Dibdins and Reynoldses as a writer of huge 
farces, and partly from the applauses of a set of interest- 
ed actors and gratuitous playwrights, whom he has helped 
to spoil in return; so that it really seems to be half 
vanity as well as sottishness, that persuades him he has a 
right to talk as he pleases, and to make us acquainted 
with this obscene dotage of his over his cups. 

On Mr. Sheridan I spare myself additional comment, 
especially after the climax with which he finished his 
moral, when explanations were going to and fro respect- 
ing the Regent's cabinet. Apollo's rebuke of him, had 
*he made his appearance, would have been on the old 
score of his neglect of the drama. As a comic writer, 
he has certainly, for a long time past, been our only con- 
nexion with a better race, — for there was an ideal sick- 
liness about Mr. Cumberland, — a hankering after petty 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 47 

effects and smooth-speaking sympathies, — an inaptitude, 
in short, to fall in with the real forms and spirits of life, 
which made him look rather like a sickly foreigner who 
had got among us, than one of the native stock. The 
best part about him was his elegant scholarship. But 
may I say, that Mr. Sheridan, upon the whole, appears 
to me to have been overrated as an observer, and that 
the best part of him is his elegance also ? an informed 
elegance no doubt, and one that is full of a social and 
sprightly humour, — but still a business of words rather 
than thoughts, — an elegance informing us little in its 
turn, and quite on the tasteful side instead of the inven- 
tive. 



6 Apollo just gave them a glance with his eye, 
1 Spencer — Rogers — Montgomery, 9 — and putting them hy r 
Begg'd the landlord to give his respects to all.three, 
And say he'd be happy to see them to tea. 

These writers, though classed together, and equally 
denied admittance to Apollo's dinner-table, either from 



48 NOTES ON THE 

ineligibility to his greater honours or inability to sustain 
the strength of his wine, are, it must be confessed, of 
very unequal merits. Mr. Montgomery is perhaps the 
most poetical of the three, Mr. Rogers the best informed, 
and Mr. Spencer the soonest pleased with himself. The 
first seems to write with his feelings about him, the se- 
cond with his books, the third with his recollections of 
yesterday and his cards of invitation. The most visible 
defect of Mr. Montgomery, who appears to be an amia- 
ble man, is a sickliness of fancy, which throws an air of 
feebleness and lassitude on all that he says ; — the fault of 
Mr. Rogers is direct imitation of not the best models, 
written in a style at once vague and elaborate. His 
» Pleasures of Memory, — a poem, at best, in imitation of 
, Goldsmith, — is written in the worst and most monotonous 
taste of modern versification, — to say nothing of the 
; never-failing souls and controuls, thoughts and fraughts, 
\ tablets, tracings, impartings, and all the endless common- 
places of magazine rhyming. Mr. Rogers, of late years, 
seems to have become aware of the defects of his versifi- 
cation, and attempted the other day to give his harp a 
higher and more various strain in the fragment upon 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 49 

Columbus ; — but the strings appear to have been in dan- 
ger of snapping. It was ludicrous enough however, and 
affords a singular instance of the habitual ignorance of 
versification in general, to find the Quarterly Review ob- 
jecting to a line in this fragment, for running a syllable 
out of its measure and attempting to snatch one of the 
finest graces of our older poetry. 

The best thing in Mr. Rogers's productions appears to 
me to be his Epistle to a Friend, describing a house and 
its ornaments. It has a good deal of elegant luxury about 
it, and seems to have been the best written because the 
most felt. Here he was describing from his own taste 
and experience, and not affecting a something which he 
had found in the writers before him. 



7 But mind that you treat him as tvell as you 9 re able 9 
And let him have part qftvhat goes from the table* 

Mr. Crabbe is unquestionably a man of genius, possess- 
ing imagination, observation, originality : he has even 
powers of the pathetic and the terrible, but with all these 



50 . NOTES ON THE 

fine elements of poetry, is singularly deficient in taste, 
his familiarity continually bordering on the vulgar, and 
his seriousness on the morbid and the shocking. His 
versification, where the force of his thoughts does not 
compel you to forget it, is a strange kind of bustle be- 
tween the lameness of Cowper and the slip-shod vigour 
of Churchill, though I am afraid it has more of the former 
than the latter. When he would strike out a line par- 
ticularly grand or melodious, he has evidently no other 
notion of one than what Pope or Darwin has given him. 
Yet even in his versification, he has contrived, by the col- 
loquial turn of his language and his primitive mention of 
persons by their christian as well as surname, to have an 
air of his own ; and indeed there is not a greater man- 
nerist in the whole circle of poetry, either in a good or 
bad sense. His main talent, both in character and de- 
scription, lies in strong and homely pieces of detail, which 
he brings before you as clearly and to the life as in a ca- 
mera obscura, and in which he has been improperly com- 
pared to the Dutch painters, for in addition to their finish 
and identification, he fills the very commonest of his 
scenes with sentiment and an interest. 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 51 



8 One ten thousandth part of the words and the time, 
That you've wasted on praises instead of your rhyme, 
Might have gained you a title to this hind of freedom, — 
But volumes qf endings, lugg'd in as you need 'em, 
Of hearts and imparts, — there's the sold that can 
read 9 e?n ? 



There is something not inelegant or unfanciful in the 
conduct of Mr. Hayley's Triumphs of Temper, and the 
moral is of that useful and desirable description, which 
from its domestic familiarity is too apt to be overlooked, 
or to be thought incapable of embellishment : — but in this 
as well as in all his other writings, there is so much talk- 
ing by rote, so many gratuitous metaphors, so many epi- 
thets to fill up and rhymes to fit in, and such a mawkish 
languor of versification, with every now and then a ridicu- 
lous hurrying for a line or so, that nothing can be more 
palling or tiresome. The worst part of Mr. Hayley is that 
smooth-tongued and overwrought complimentary style, in 
addressing and speaking of others, which, whether in con- 

e 2 



52 NOTES ON THE 

versation or writing, has always the ill-fortune, to say the 
least of it, of being suspected as to sincerity. His best 
part, as has been justly observed, is his Annotation. The 
notes to his poems are amusing and full of a graceful 
scholarship; and two things must be remembered to his 
honour, — first, that although he had not genius enough to 
revive the taste in his poetry, he has been the quickest of 
our late writers to point out the great superiority of the 
Italian school over the French ; and second, that he has 
been among the first, and the most ardent of them all, in 
hailing the dawn of our native painting. Indeed, with the 
singular exception of Milton, who had visited Italy, and 
who was such a painter himself, it is to be remembered to 
the honour of all our poets, great and small, that they 
have shown a just anxiety for the appearance of the 
sister art, 

And felt a brother's longing to embrace 
At the least glimpse of her resplendent face. 

It would appear, from some specimens in his notes, that 
Mr. Hayley would have cut a more advantageous figure 
as a translator than as an original poet. I do not say he 
would have been equal to great works ; for a translator, to 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 55 

keep any thing like a pace with his original, should have 
at least a portion of his original spirit ; but as Mr. Hayley 
is not destitute of the poet, the thoughts of another might 
have invigorated him ; and he would at any rate have been 
superior to those mere rhymers, — such men as Hoole, for 
instance, — who, without the smallest pretensions to poetry 
in their own persons, think themselves qualified to trans- 
late epics. In the notes to his Essays on Epic Poetry, 
there is a pleasing analysis, with occasional versions of 
twenty or thirty lines, of the Araucana of Alonzo d'Ercilla, 
and in the same place is a translation of the three first 
Cantos of Dante, which, if far beneath the majestic sim- 
plicity of the original, is at least, for spirit as well as 
closeness, infinitely superior to such mouthing nonenti- 
ties as the version of Mr. Boyd. But Dante, to say 
nothing of his demands upon a variety of powers, in 
consequence of those varieties of his own, in which after 
shaking us with his terrors, or shocking us with his 
resentments and his diabolisms, he will enchant us with 
his grace, melt us with his tenderness, or refresh us 
with some exquisite picture of nature, is like all the 
other poets of the first class, scarcely translatable but 



•54 NOTES ON THE 

by a kindred genius. The natural language they speak 
sets at nought the cant habit of books. You might as well 
endeavour, by the help of a fan, to gather round you the 
morning freshness of nature, as think of apprehending one 
of the great spirits of poetry, by means of these toyers in 
versification. Even the real poets among us have not done 
justice to those whom they translated, with the exception 
of some smaller pieces of lyric : Dryden wants the gracer 
fulness and the selectness of Virgil, Chapman all the music 
of Homer, and Pope all the nature : — what then are we 
to expect from such a writer as Francis, or from that 
prince of involuntary crambo, Hoole ? No wonder that 
men of good sense and taste, who happen not to be scholars, 
have found Horace a dull fellow and Ariosto a dotard. 

The best translation, upon the whole, that has been 
produced in our language, both for closeness to the sense 
and sympathy with the spirit of its original, appears tome 
to be Fairfax's Tasso. I do not say that it is a perfect 
one, or that it is not sometimes straitened for want of 
room, and sometimes clouded with the obscurities of its 
age ; but Fairfax seems to go along with his author, and 
to be more of a piece with him, than any translator per- 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 55 

haps that has yet appeared. The versification is singu- 
larly free for its closeness, and has always been accounted 
one of the earliest harmonizers of our poetry : Dryden 
calls him on this account the father of Waller, who indeed 
was not slow to confess the relationship ; and Fairfax, in 
renewing his claims upon our attention, may boast that he 
has been praised by Collins, and imitated by Milton. 

The flowing versification of Fairfax has even drawn 
some writers into a love of him, who in other respects 
were not very seducible by the higher species of poetry. 
Among these is Hume, who compared a thing called 
Wilkie's Epigoniad to Virgil, and who was much inclined, 
in compliment to the rest of his French taste in literature, 
to call Shakspeare a barbarian. * Hume however is 
wrong when he says that " each line" in Tasso " is faith- 
fully rendered by a correspondent line in the translation." 
The faithfulness, it is true, is for the most part as surpris- 
ing as he represents it, and the number of lines is the same 
in both poems ; but Fairfax has occasionally substituted a 
line of his own for the sense of the original, sometimes, as 

* See the Appendix to the reign of James the First. 



56 NOTES ON THE 

may be supposed, with no good to his author, yet some- 
times even with improvement, and the line has always 
something poetical in it, though its taste may not be the 
true one. In the third book for instance, stanza 21st, 
where Tancred unknowingly encounters Clorinda, and 
knocks off her helmet, Fairfax says 

About her shoulders shone her golden locks, 
Like sunny beams on alabaster rocks. 

This is a splendid image ; but Tasso merely says, with a 
more natural and momentary touch, that her golden locks 
were shaken out in the wind, and a young female appeared 
before him : — 

E le chiome dorate al vento sparse, 
Giovane donna in mezzo '1 campo apparse. 

The conclusion of the succeeding stanza has also a turn 
with it unlike the original, and not in so allowable a taste, 
though its faultiness is Italian. But in other instances 
Fairfax can contend with his author, even at his best ; as 
in that close of the 14th stanza, canto 1st, describing the 
descent of the angel Gabriel, who is represented by Tasso 
as first dropping his flight upon Lebanon, and balancing 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 57 

himself, as he lights, on equalized wings — su 1* adeguate 
penne — 

Pria sul Libano monte ei si ritenne, 
E si libro su V adeguate penne. 

This elegant imitation of Virgil, Fairfax improved into a 
thought as new as it was beautiful, — 

On Lebanon at first his foot he set, 

And shook his wings with rory may-dews wet* 

Milton, passing over the original in this passage, copies 
the translator, and that nothing may be lost, adds attitude 
to the motion from Virgil, and turns the dew into fragrance 
from Sannazarius: 

Like Maia's son he stood, 
And shook his plumes, that heav'nly fragance filTd 
The circuit wide. Book 5. 

But I am getting unawares into a luxurious gossiping, 
quite out of my subject. The chief purpose for which I 
mentioned Fairfax was to suggest a republication of him 
in preference to the common-place dulness of Hoole, who 
would assuredly have never been tolerated, had not the 
last age of poetry, in which he lived, been given up to the 
lees of the French taste. The love of Italian literature 



58 NOTES ON THE 

which began to revive among a few scholars of that age, is 
beginning to have its effect upon this ; and if it continue, 
will do a great deal of good both to our fancy and versifi- 
cation, — I mean, will put them both in a right way of exer- 
cising their faculties, and help them to think and speak for 
themselves ; for there is no danger that we shall fall into 
those errors of the Italian school, which however they may 
have been exaggerated by superficial observers, certainly 
do exist, and which are the natural overgrowth of fancy 
at certain periods of its flourishing. Our long habits of 
criticism will save us from those. 

It is to be observed, after all, in speaking of schools 
of poetry, that they are only to be recommended compa- 
ratively. We are much more likely to get at a real poe- 
tical taste through the Italian than through the French 
school, — through Spenser, Milton, and Ariosto, than Pope, 
Boileau, and their followers ; the former will teach us to 
vary our music and to address ourselves more directly to 
nature ; but nature herself is, of course, the great and per- 
fecting mistress, without whom we become either eccen- 
tric pretenders, or danglers after inferior beauty, or re- 
peaters, at best, of her language at second hand. We 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 59 

must study where Shakspeare studied, — in the fields, in the f 
heavens, — in the heart and fortunes of man ; — and he, and \ 
the other great poets, should be our reading out of school-/ 
hours. * 



9 So saying, he rang, to leave nothing in doubt. 
And the sour little gentleman bless 1 d himself out. 

Mr. Gifford is a man of strong natural sense, with such 
acquired talents, as are apt to impress us with double 
respect, when their history is connected with early diffi- 
culties and an humble origin. The manner in which he 
has related those difficulties, in the interesting little me- 
moir prefixed to his Juvenal, is calculated to give his 
readers a regard for him as well as respect ; and upon the 
whole, there is no living author perhaps, who might have 
enjoyed a more unmingled reputation, of the middle spe- 
cies, than Mr. Gifford. But a vile, peevish temper, . the 
more inexcusable in its indulgence, because he appears to 
have had early warning of its effects, breaks out in every 
page of his criticism, and only renders his affected grin- 



60 NOTES ON THE 

ning the more unpleasant. There is no generosity in his 
satire : — the merest folly he treats not only with ridicule 
but resentment ; and even a mistake, upon a point which 
he understands better than some unlucky commentator, 
is something upon which he thinks himself entitled to be 
indignant and retributive. I pass over the nauseous 
Epistle to Peter Pindar, and even the notes to his Baviad 
and Mceviad, where though less vulgar in his language, 
he has a great deal of the pert cant and snip-snap which 
he deprecates, and wastes a ludicrous quantity of triumph 
over every poor creature that comes athwart him ; but he 
cannot repress this spirit even upon better men, as may 
be seen where he differs with his brother commentators 
on Juvenal ; and every decent mind, I believe, has been 
disgusted with his tiresome, peevish, and useless insults 
over his precursors in the explanation of Massinger. Had 
Mr. Gifford, for his own mistakes only, been treated with 
the roughness which he has shown towards others, he 
would have had enough to bear ; but to visit on him the 
full return of his temper, would be a severity, as humiliat- 
ing to a proper satirist, as intolerable to himself. 

Our author however does not appear to have carried 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 61 

this enthusiastic impatience of his against all the circles 
of life, with which his talents have successfully made him 
acquainted. Like his remorseless but at the same time 
discriminating brother critics, the Suppressors of Vice, 
his indignation appears to have made a seasonable stop in 
approaching the higher orders ; and thus from a wrathful, 
personal satirist of vice and folly, he has softened and 
settled himself into an editor of old dramatists and of 
government reviews, who is only wrathful in speaking of 
the objectors to princely vices, and only personal upon 
dead men or respectable ladies. Let a man have made 
a mistake upon an old poet fifty years back, and he shall 
be properly denounced ; let Mrs. Barbauld, to whom the 
rising generation are so much indebted, publish but a 
poetical opinion in verse, differing with the rulers that are 
and the opinions that ought to be, and she shall be 
brought forward with all her poetical sins on her head ; — 
nay, let a married lady give us but an account of her 
voyage to India in following her betrothed husband, and 
she shall have gone there to get one ; — but speak not of 
" the imputed weaknesses of the great." * Princes might 

* Quarterly Review, No. 18, p. 148. 



62 NOTES ON THE 

formerly have kept mistresses ; they might also have dis- 
carded them ; and these discarded mistresses, if they 
sinned in rhyme, might be denounced accordingly, even 
to their rheumatism and their crutches ; f — but no such 
things are done now, either by princes or the favourites 
of princes; speak not of "the imputed weaknesses of the 
great;'* — there were vices at court formerly, — vices in 
Juvenal's time, — vices even in our own time, when bad 
poets were going and ladies fell lame, — but now, — talk of 
no such thing ; every prince lives with his wife as he ought 
to do, keeps the most virtuous company as he always 
did, and is hailed, of course, wherever he goes, with 
shouts of a cordial popularity : — the vices, that might re- 
verse such a character, are only " imputed* * to him ; — 
to use a pithy and favourite mode of quotation, " There's 
no such thing!" 

With regard to Mr. Gifford's poetical claims, which I 
had nearly forgotten, he seems to have thought very 
justly, that the Juvenal required something better than 
the usual monotonous versification ; but in aiming at vi- 

* See a pleasant and manly fling at Mrs. Robinson'* " crutches" in 
the Baviad, v. 28. 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 63 

gour and variety, he has fallen into no versification at all, 
and become lame and prosaical. The only approach that 
he ever made to the poetical character was in some pleas- 
ing and even pathetic lines in the notes to his Mceviad, 
beginning 

I wish I was where Anna lies ;-— 

but such lines coming in such a place, in the very thick 
of petty resentments and vulgar personalities, contradict 
the better taste that is in them, and give the reader per- 
haps as distasteful an idea of the author, at the time of 
life when he inserted them, as any one passage of his 
writings. 



10 For his host tvas a God, — Xiohat a very great thing ! 
And tvhat ivas still greater in his eyes, — a King ! 

Avoc% A7roAAa>i/ — King Apollo, — a common title with 
the old Grecian poets. — See the following note* 



64 NOTES ON THE 



11 Be original j man ; study more, scribble less, 
Nor mistake present favour for lasting success ; 
And remember, if laurels are what you xvoiddjind, 
The crown of all triumph is freedom of mind. 

Of Mr. Walter Scott's innate and trusting reverence for 
thrones and dominations, the reader may find specimens 
abundantly nauseous in the edition of Dryden. His 
style in prose, setting aside its Scotticisms, is very well 
where he affects nothing beyond a plain statement or a 
brief piece of criticism ; and it is not to be supposed that 
his critical observations are always destitute of acuteness 
or even of beauty ; but the moment he attempts anything 
of particular ease or profundity, he only becomes slovenly 
in the one instance and poetically pedantic in the other. 
His politics may be estimated at once by the simple fact, 
that of all the advocates of Charles the Second, he is the 
least scrupulous in mentioning his crimes, because he is 
the least abashed. Other writers have paid decency the 
compliment of doubting their extent or of keeping them 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 65 

in the back-ground ; but here we have the plainest, tooth- 
picking acknowledgements, that Charles was a pensioner of 
France, a shameless debauchee, a heartless friend, and an 
assassinating master, and yet all the while he is little else but 
the " gay monarch," the " merry monarch," the " witty 
monarch," the " good-natured monarch ;" and Mr. Scott 
really appears to think little or nothing of all that he says 
against him. On the other hand, let a villain be but a Whig, 
or let any unfortunate person, with singular, Southern no- 
tions of independence, be but an opposer of Charles's court, 
and he is sure to meet with a full and crying denunciation 
of his offences, with raised hands and lifted eyeballs. The 
execution of Charles the First Mr. Scott calls an enormity 
unequalled in modern history, till the present age fur- 
nished a parallel : — massacres, of course, and other trifles 
of that sort, particularly when kings and courtiers are the 
actors, fade before it ; St. Bartholomew's day deserves to 
be counted lucky in comparison with it ; and princely vil- 
lains like Henry the Eighth, Ezzelino, and Borgia, are 
respectable and conscientious men by the side of the Pre- 
sident Bradshaw and his colleagues. At the same time, 
a king, who by the basest means and for the slightest 

F 



66 NOTES ON THE 

cause would assassinate a faithful servant in the very act 
of performing his duty, is only ungenerous, — one of whom 
the said servant has no small reason to complain. The 
reader may think this representation exaggerated, but let 
the author speak for himself. " His political principles 
(the Earl of Mulgrave's) were those of a staunch Tory, 
which he maintained through his whole life; and he was 
zealous for the royal prerogative, although he had no 
small reason to complain of Charles the Second, who to 
avenge himself of Mulgrave for a supposed attachment to 
the Princess Anne, sent him to Tangiers, at the head of 
some troops, in a leaky vessel, which it zvas supposed must 
have perished in the voyage. Though Mulgrave was ap- 
prized of the danger, he scorned to shun it ; and the Earl 
of Plymouth, a favourite son of the King, generously in- 
sisted upon sharing it along with him. This ungenerous 
attempt to destroy him in the very act of performing his 
duty, with the refusal of a regiment, made a temporary 
change in Mulgrave's conduct." Notes on Absalom and 
Achitopel in Dryden's Works, vol. ix. p. 304<. 

Of Mr. Walter Scott's poetry the estimate is sufficiently 
easy, and will now perhaps, after the surfeit he has given 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 67 

us of it, be pretty generally acknowledged. It is little 
more than a leap back into the dress and the diction of 
rude but gorgeous times, when show concealed a great 
want of substance, and a little thinking was conveyed in 
a great many words. Thus it is not invidious to call the 
late demand for it a fashion, for it was almost as mere a 
fashion as the revival of any other artificial mode, and 
just as likely to go out again. That Mr. Scott is a poet is 
not to be controverted ; — he has a lightsome fancy, pleas- 
ing circumstance, luxury of description ; and in his idea 
of Marmion has shown a taste for that mixture of genuine 
human character with the abstractions of poetry, which 
is a mark of no ordinary genius for narrative. But 
when the novelty of a particular mode of style is gone, a 
poet will obtain reputation for little else than a discern- 
ment of other men's beauties, who has no natural lan- 
guage and no style of his own, — who cannot describe 
what he sees and feels but in phrases previously set down 
for him, — and who must therefore be suspected of seeing 
and feeling, not so much from his own perceptions, as 
from the suggestions of those that have gone before him, 
Mr. Scott's ladies gay and barons bold, his full-wells and 

f2 



68 NOTES ON THE 

I-pray-yous, his drinkings of " the red wine" and his 
** kirtles of the cramasie," — his rhymes pressed in to the 
service, and his verses dancing away now and then out of 
the measure, may have been new to the town in general, 
but they are as ancient as recollection itself to the readers 
of poetry ; and a person tolerably well read in old songs 
and stories might exclaim with Dr. Johnson on a similar 
occasion, 

Wheresoever I turn my view, 
All is old and nothing new, 
Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet. 

The plea, if any such has been made, of suiting the lan- 
guage of the poem to the manners of the story, is a mere 
excuse for want of power to talk naturally : for to say no- 
thing of the continued modern smoothness which is added 
to the old versification, and of the /lifferent periods of 
time to which the self-same language is applied, no 
writers, not excepting the old romancers themselves, ever 
did or could adapt their language to the times of their 
story, unless the events they described were contempora- 
neous. The romancers indeed notoriously violated every 
species of proper costume to suit themselves to their own 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 69 

period, and if they had attempted to retain an improper 
costume and to talk in the language of previous times, 
we should in vain have looked for those natural bursts of 
passion, and all those affecting simplicities, which they 
were enabled to put in the mouths of others, by speak*- 
ing, as they felt, from their own. Thus even what was a 
natural language in these writers, becomes, from the imi- 
tation, an unnatural and affected one in Mr. Scott ; and 
in fact, he talks the language of no times and of no feel- 
ings, for his style is too flowing to be ancient, too antique 
to be modern, and too artificial in every respect to be the 
result of his own first impressions. 

There is indeed a general want of ambition about Mr. 
Scott, and a contentedness with what is showy rather than 
solid, that look like a poet of no very great order. His 
resorting to a style so easy of imitation, his giving himself 
up to a profusion of words and prettinesses on which he 
might rhyme by the hour, and his coming out, year after 
year, with a new poem provocative of all sorts of suspi- 
cions connected with the trade, — -all exhibit something, 
ready indeed, and entertaining, and penny-turning, but very 
far from what is either lasting or noble. Mr. Scott writes 



70 NOTES ON THE 

a very sprightly ballad, can sketch a good character from 
the life, and can hide himself to advantage in the costume 
of other times ; but brought forward in his own unassist- 
ed person, and judged by a high standard of poetry, he 
wants originality and a language. 



12 But there 9 s one thing Pve always forgotten to mention , 
Your versification^ — pray give it invention. 

Mr. Campbell seems to have hampered his better genius 
between the versification of others and the struggle to 
express his own thoughts in their natural language. I 
sp'eak not of the Pleasures of Hope, which though abun- 
dant in promise, is a young and uninformed production 
in comparison with his subsequent performances : — but I 
am persuaded that nobody would ever have thought of 
comparing that poem with the Gertrude of Wyoming, or 
of undervaluing the latter in general, and regarding it as 
not answering the promise of his youth, if in quitting the 
ordinary versification of the day, he had not deviated 
into another imitation and got into the trammels of 






FEAST OF THE POETS. 71 

Spenser. The style perhaps is not so much an imitation 
of Spenser, as of Thomson, the imitator of Spenser ; but 
the want of originality is certainly not lessened by this 
remove from the fountain-head. In Spenser's style and 
stanza there is undoubtedly a great deal of harmony and 
dignity, and specimens of almost every beauty of writing 
may be found in them ; but they will hardly be pleasing 
now-a-days in a poem of any length, unless the subject 
involves a portion of the humorous or satirical, as in the 
School-Mistress and the Castle of Indolence, where the 
author looks through his seriousness with a smile, and the 
quaintnesses of the old poetry fall in with his lurking 
archness or his assumed importance. And the reasons 
would seem to be obvious ; for not to dwell upon the in- 
herent and unaccommodating faults of the stanza in a 
long English poem, such as its tendency to circumlocu- 
tion and its multitude of similar rhymes, it has always an 
air of direct imitation, which is unbefitting the dignity of 
an original seriousness ; and its old words and inversions 
contradict that freshness and natural flow of language, 
which we have a right to expect in the poet that would 
touch our affections. We demand, — not the copy of 



72 NOTES ON THE 

another's simplicity, but the simplicity of the speaker 
himself; — we want an unaffected, contemporaneous lan- 
guage, such as our ears and our hearts shall equally re- 
cognize, and such as our own feelings would utter, were 
they as eloquent as the poets. The choice of this style is 
the more to be regretted in Mr. Campbell, because his 
genius evidently points to the most attractive sympathies 
of our nature, and his great talent lies in the pathetic. 
Indeed it is observable, how inevitably his own taste leads 
him to forget the imitative turn of his versification, when- 
ever he has to describe some particular scene, in which 
the affections are interested; but the present stock of 
readers, who have had their ears spoiled by easy versifi- 
cation, will not readily consent to exchange it for one of 
a less accommodating description with additional difficul- 
ties. Of several styles of imitation that come before 
them, they will inevitably prefer that which comes easiest 
to their old habits ; and this is one great reason why the 
productions of Mr. Walter Scott have outrun in popularity 
the coy loveliness of Gertrude of Wyoming, — the finest 
narrative poem, in my mind, that has been produced in 
the present day. — While I have been palled with the eter- 



V 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 73 

nal sameness of Mr. Scott, and disgusted with the pue- 
rilities and affectations of Mr. Southey, I have read over 
and over again the Gertrude of Wyoming, and have paid 
it that genuine tribute, which the pride of manhood and 
the necessary habits of adversity are not much in the 
custom of lavishing. 

In speaking of Mr. Campbell, his smaller pieces must 
not be forgotten. Their merits are very unequal, and 
some of them, written perhaps in early youth, seem alto- 
gether unworthy of his pen ; but Hohenlinden, and the 
two naval songs, are noble pieces, beautifully dashed with 
the pathetic ; and the Soldier's Dream is one of those 
heartfelt and domestic appeals, from which the fancy, after 
dwelling upon their tenderness, is suddenly glad to escape. 

13 And never should poet so gifted and rare, 
Pollute the bright Eden Jove gives to his care, 
But love the fair Virtue for tvhom it is given, 
And keep the spot pure for the visits of Heaven. 

It is natural in congratulating a person on his escape 
from some extraordinary defect, to forget the mention of 



74 NOTES ON THE 

smaller ones ; otherwise, Apollo might have rallied Mr. 
Moore on his exuberant fondness for dews, flowers, and 
exclamations, and have quarrelled with him for not apply- 
ing his powers to some poem of length that should ex- 
hibit them in their proper light. The first of these faults 
however will most likely follow the other misdemeanours 
of his youth : and the latter he is understood to be doing 
away, at this moment, in a country retirement. Cer- 
tainly the pernicious tendency of Mr. Moore's former 
productions is to be questioned : — it was only to be 
equalled perhaps by the good that might result from a 
change in his way of thinking, and from the pains he 
would take, when so altered, to transfer the attractive- 
ness of his style to the cause of virtue. But there always 
appeared to me, in the midst of that taste of his, a cordial 
and redeeming something, — a leaning after the better af- 
fections, — which showed a conscious necessity of correct- 
ing it. Part with it altogether he need not as a writer, 
and could not as a poet ; but to correct and unite it with 
nobler sympathies was his business as a true lover both of 
the sex and of his country. It would have been incon- 
sistent in a politician so spirited, and a patriot so warm as 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 75 

Mr. Moore, to assist in rendering us slaves in private, 
while he would have us all freemen in public. 

The real admirers therefore of this poet were rejoiced 
to see in his latter publication, the Irish Melodies, how 
greatly he had improved his morality, and not only so, 
but how much the graces of his fancy had gained instead 
of lost by the improvement. In the sprightly and idio- 
matic flow of his songs he had already overtaken Prior, 
and on the ground of sentiment had left him behind ; but 
the union of strong fancy and feeling discoverable in his 
later productions, and the unexpected appearance of a 
taste for the dignified and contemplative, so distinct from 
the town associations that crowded about one's ordinary 
idea of him, were promises of a still greater reputation, 
and will enable him, it is trusted, to reach posterity un- 
der an exemplary as well as graceful aspect. 

As a versifier, Mr. Moore does not appear, hitherto, to 
have attempted any improvement of the models he found 
in vogue ; but what he might do in this respect may easily 
be conceived, from the natural fineness of his ear. The 
lines in his lyric pieces however have a music in them, 
distinct from the ordinary monotony of his contempora- 
ries, and evidently traceable to his taste for the sister art. 



76 NOTES ON THE 

You feel at once, that his songs are indeed to be sung, — 
a happy propriety, which he seems to share exclusively 
with Dryden. 

!4 See Note 26 . The Sackville here mentioned must not 
be confounded with Rochester's cotemporary, the author 
of the excellent song, " To all you ladies now at land," 
who was a man of wit and good humour, but no poet. 
The allusion is to his ancestor, the author of the noble 
Induction to the Mirror of Magistrates, and harbinger of 
Spenser. 

16 When, all of a sudden, there rose on the stairs 
A noise as of persons with singular airs ; 
You'd have thought 'twas the Bishops or Judges a coming, 
Or whole court of Aldermen hawing and humming, 
Or Abbot, at least, with his ushers before, 
But 'twas only Bob Southey and two or three more. 
The last couplet originally stood thus, — 

Or at least my Lord Colley with all his grand brothers ; 
But 'twas only Bob Southey and three or four others. 

Colley is one of the Christian names of the Marquis 
Wellesley. I notice this alteration, lest having felt myself 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 77 

bouad to make it, I should seem to evade its acknow- 
ledgement. There are still some points about the Noble 
Marquis, which I may not particularly admire ; but the 
policy he has lately pursued and avowed, the just appre- 
ciation he seems to have formed of the contest with Bona- 
parte, and the military genius displayed by his brother in 
the Peninsula, are very far from warranting any con- 
temptuous allusion to him or his family. There used to 
be certainly a feeling of distaste to them on account of 
their imputed haughtiness ; nor did the Indian governor- 
ship, or their domestic politics, tend to diminish it ; but 
the Marquis's present conduct seems to be rather inde- 
pendent than arrogant ; and there is a well-tempered and 
strait-forward simplicity about the military character of 
the Field Marshal, worthy of the great cause to which his 
sword made an opening.* The original line therefore, 
such as it is, stands against myself, and not against the 
noble brothers. 

The next part of the passage alludes to the affectation 
of universal superiority, — of being best and wisest in 

* This sword for the point, and the physical and moral robustness of 
the English soldiery for the body, have since formed a wedge, which has 
finally split asunder the power of Bonaparte. 



78 NOTES ON THE 

whatever they felt, thought, and did, — which used to 
mark the Lake Poets in the days of their innocence, and 
has not forsaken them now that they are men of the world. 
It was then, however, a pardonable piece of boyishness 
and enthusiasm, at which good nature would smile ; — 
now, it has become a full-grown and insolent pretension, 
which good sense must deride. 

It is curious to see with what apparent unconsciousness 
this change has been affected. The best feature in their 
character, till of late years, was their public as well as 
private integrity; but the maudlin German cant which 
first infected their muse at last corrupted their manners, 
and being a jargon adapted to every sort of extreme, en- 
abled them to change their free opinions for slavish ones, 
without altering the cast of their language. Good opi- 
nion still lingered about some of them ; but latterly the 
very best have quite lost the bloom of their character, and 
degenerated, like the others, into servile place-hunters, 
and gross editorial puffers of themselves. Mr. Southey has 
accepted an office under government, of such a nature, as 
absolutely ties up his independence; Mr. Coleridge, in pam- 
phlets and newspapers, has donehisbest to deserve likewise; 
and yet they shall all tell you that they have not diminished 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 79 

their free spirit a jot.* In like manner, they are as violent 
and intolerant against their old opinions, as ever they were 
against their new ones, and without seeing how far the ar- 
gument carries, shall insist that no man can possess a de- 
cent head or respectable heart who does not agree with 
them. Persons who go to neither extreme, are of course 
to expect still less mercy, if possible. Mr. Southey, who 
is one of the pensioned reviewers in the Quarterly, does 
not blush to tell those who are acquainted with his former 
opinions of the great and their corruptions, that a mere 
stickler for Reform now-a-days, even with good inten- 
tions, is little better than a " house-breaker." f Poor 
fellow ! he must have been a sad well-meaning profligate 
in his younger days I — It is in vain you tell such rea- 
soners, that you are neither Jacobin nor courtier, that 

* Mr. Wordsworth's name was added to these two in the first edition ; 
but it seems that he regards his office as a private favour bestowed by an 
old friend of his family, and still vindicates his right to think and speak as 
he pleases. 

f See an article on the State of the Poor, in a late number of the 
Quarterly. I mention the authors of these reviews with the less scruple, 
because I think that anonymous writers in general have no right of con- 
cealment, particularly when they attack people in this manner, — and be- 
cause I never thought myself at liberty to conceal my own name, when 
it either was asked or might be so. 



80 NOTES ON THE 

you have never made a noise about equality, as they 
did formerly, nor ever truckled to the vice of a court, as 
they do now : — you differ with them ; and that is enough, 
with their intolerant egotism, to prove you both fool and 
knave. 

The grossness of this utter defiance of candour and con- 
sistency would be too despicable for notice, did it not tend 
to bring all profession and principle into doubt, — and to 
add strength, by so doing, to the scepticism of men of the 
world, and bitterness to the reflexions of those who suffer 
for being otherwise. But let us never forget to separate 
an honest and tried consistency from the vague, com- 
plexional enthusiasm that starts away at the sight of 
danger, and runs into any and every extreme. The per- 
sons of whom we have been speaking have been always in 
extremes, and perhaps the good they are destined to per- 
form in their generation, is to afford a striking lesson of 
the inconsistencies naturally produced by so being. No- 
thing remains the same but their vanity. 

To conclude, before Mr. Southey accepted those 
meaner laurels which Apollo, in the succeeding lines, has 
so much reason to disdain, there was a native goodness 
about his character, and a taste for placid virtue in Ins 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 81 

writings, which conciliated regard and made us think of 
him with a pertinacious kindness. I will not answer, that 
my ideas of his poetry have not been of too high a de- 
scription on this account, relying as they did on what ap- 
peared to be indicative of a finer species of mind, and to 
promise something greater than he had yet performed ; but 
latterly he seems every day to have been growing more 
and more contented with all sorts of trucklings, — truck- 
lings to court, trucklings to common-places, trucklings to 
the writer's trade. 

Of all the Lake poets, — those, at least, who have ob- 
tained any eminence, — he is unquestionably the tritest in 
every respect. He is no more to be compared with Mr. 
Wordsworth in real genius than the man who thinks once 
out of a hundred times is with him who thinks the whole 
hundred ; but that he is at the same time a poet, will be 
no more denied, than that the hundredth part of Mr. 
Wordsworth's genius would make a poet. His fancy per- 
haps has gone little beyond books, but still it is of a truly 
poetical character; he touches the affections pleasingly 
though not powerfully ; and his moral vein stands him in 
stead, as it ought to do, of a good deal of dignity in other 

G 



82 NOTES ON THE 

respects. What he wants in the gross, is a natural 
strength of thinking, and in the particular, a real style of 
his own ; for as his simplicity is more a thing of words 
than of thoughts, he naturally borrows his language from 
those who have thought for him. What Mr. Wordsworth 
conceals from you, or in fact overcomes by the growth of 
his own mind, Mr. Southey leaves open and bald, — a di- 
rect imitation, prominent with nothing but haths, ands> 
yeas, evens, and other fragments of old speech. As to his 
attempt to bring back the Cowleian licentiousness of metre 
in another shape, and with nothing like an ear to make 
it seducing, it is a mere excuse for haste and want of 
study. 

For the more complacent opinion formerly held of Mr. 
Southey's general character, Apollo, I am afraid, is not 
so easily to be defended as myself, inasmuch as a want of 
foresight is unbecoming his prophetical character ; — but 
this I leave to be settled by some future Burmax or Bif- 
fius, whenever he shall do me the honour to find out the 
learning of this egregious performance, and publish the 
Feast of the Poets in two volumes quarto. Apollo, like 
other vivacious spirits, chose to do without his foresight 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 85 

sometimes, — as the commentator will no doubt have the 
goodness to show for me. 

By the way, speaking of Mr. Southey's court laurels, of 
which I have luckily said enough in another publication, 
people have not forgotten what he said formerly of M the 
degraded title of epic," and of his objections to write ac- 
cordingly under such degradation. How is it, that he 
has not expressed a similar horror at the degraded title 
of Poet Laureat ? He cannot pretend to say that it is 
not so, for setting aside the remaining reasons, one of the 
very persons who helped to degrade the one, contributed 
to do as much for the other. Would it not be better in 
some future edition of his works, to alter that word " de- 
graded" into some more convenient epithet, such as 
worthless for instance, — that is to say, valueless, — penny- 
less, — something that does not give one a pension ? 

16 For Coleridge had vex'd him long since, I suppose, 
By his idling, and gabbling, and muddling in prose ; — 

Mr. Coleridge is a man of great natural talents, as they 
who most lament his waste of them, are the readiest to 

g2 



84 NOTES ON THE 

acknowledge. Indeed it is their conviction in this respect, 
which induces them to feel the waste as they do ; and if 
Apollo shows him no quarter, it is evidently because he 
looks upon him as a deserter. Of his poetical defects 
enough will be said in speaking of those of Mr. Words- 
worth ; and if as much cannot be said of his kindred 
beauties, it is rather perhaps because he has written less 
and is a man of less industry, than because he does not 
equal the latter in genius. The allusion in the text is to 
his strange periodical publication, called * The Friend.' — 
See Note 1S . 

There was an idle report, it seems, on the first appear- 
ance of Mr. Coleridge's tragedy, that I was the insti- 
gator of a party to condemn it. The play, as it happened, 
was not condemned, nor does any such party appear to 
have existed ; — the criticism also, which was written upon 
it in the Examiner, by a friend, must have removed, I 
should think, all doubts on that head. It is very certain, 
that at the time of its appearance I was too ill to be out 
of doors, — nor is it less so, that regarding myself as a 
reporter of the public judgment in these matters, I never 
thought myself justified in being a party on either side 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 85 

viva voce. Mr. Coleridge should do more credit to his 
own notions of opposition, than to suppose me capable of 
these idle tricks. If he still persists however in thinking 
it extraordinary that I should exhibit a more lively regret 
than others at seeing him throw away his fine genius as 
he has done, he may attribute it, if he pleases, to a cause 
from which he seems to have expected a reverse kind of 
treatment, — to my having been bred up, as well as him- 
self, in the humble but not unlettered school, over which 
his memory might have thrown a lustre.* 

* The Grammar-school of Christ's Hospital. Of this institution, which 
is of a truly English description, and a sort of medium betwixt the high 
breeding of the more celebrated foundations and the conscious humility 
of the charity-school, see a very interesting account in some late num- 
bers of the Gentleman's Magazine by my friend Charles Lamb, who 
was contemporary there with Coleridge, and of whose powers of wit and 
observation I should delight to say more, if. he had not confined those 
chief talents of his to the fireside. Mr. Coleridge, I believe, helped to 
give a new stimulus to the literary ambition of his school- fellows. We 
cannot boast of many great names ; but of such as we have, we are fond 
in proportion to their fewness. It was here that the celebrated Camden 
received the rudiments of his learning ; and I recollect, it used to be a 
proud enjoyment to us to witness the grateful inscriptions in gold letters 
with which Joshua Barnes had adorned the books that he presented to the 
library. As to college honours, at least in the Belles Xettres, it may be 
truly said that the school has of late years grown familiar with them. 



86 NOTES ON THE 



17 And Wordsworth, one day, made his very hairs bristle. 
By going and changing his harp for a whistle. 

The allusion here scarcely needs a remark ; but in re- 
vising my verses, and endeavouring to do justice to Mr. 
Wordsworth, I was anxious, whenever I mentioned him, 
to show myself sensible of the great powers he possesses, 
and with what sort of gift he has consented to trifle. 



18 When one began spouting the cream of orations 
In praise qf bombarding one's friends and relations ; 

Mr. Coleridge, in his * Friend, ' ventured upon a studious 
and even cordial defence (at least so his readers under- 
stood it) of the attack on Copenhagen, — one of those 
lawless outrages, done in the insolence and impatience of 
power, which at first brought infamy, and have at last 
brought down retribution, upon the head of Bonaparte. 
The imitation of such actions proves how little the contest 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 87 

against him was understood at the time, either in its moral 
or political point of view, or rather in its only proper point 
of view, which comprises both; — but the world appears to 
have learnt better since. The above parenthesis is used 
in speaking of the general acceptation of Mr. Coleridge's 
meaning, because he himself, it appears, has astounded 
some people by deprecating such a construction. 



*9 And t'other some lines he had made on a straw, 
Showing how he had found it> and what it was for y 
fyc. fyc. 

I am told, on very good authority, that this parody 
upon Mr. Wordsworth's worst style of writing has been 
taken for a serious extract from him, and panegyrized 
accordingly, with much grave wonderment how I could 
find it ridiculous. — See the next note. 



§8 NOTES ON THE 



20 And all cried at last loith a passion sublime, 

" This, this is the Prince of the Bards of his Time /" 

Whatever may be the faults of Mr. Wordsworth, it cer- 
tainly appears to me, that we have had no poet since the 
days of Spenser and Milton, — so allied in the better part 
of his genius to those favoured men, not excepting even 
Collins, who saw farther into the sacred places of poetry 
than any man of the last age. Mr. Wordsworth speaks 
less of the vulgar tongue of the profession than any writer 
since that period ; he always thinks when he speaks, has 
always words at command, feels deeply, fancies richly, 
and never descends from that pure and elevated morality, 
which is the native region of the first order of poetical 
spirits. 

To those who doubt the justice of this character, and 
who have hitherto seen in Mr. Wordsworth nothing but 
trifling and childishness, and who at the same time speak 
with rapture of Spenser and Milton, I would only recom- 
mend the perusal of such poems as the Female Vagrant, 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 89 

( see "Lyrical Ballads and other Poems," vol. 1 , pa. 85 ) , — 
a little piece on the Nightingale, at p. 312, * the three 
little exquisite pieces from p. 128 to 131, another at 
p. 313, — the Old Cumberland Beggar (a piece of perfect 
description philosophized), — Louisa, the Happy War- 
rior, to H. C, the Sonnet entitled London, anpther on 
Westminster Bridge, another beginning " The World 
is too much with us," the majestic simplicity of the Ode 
to Duty, a noble subject most nobly treated, and the 
simple, deep-felt, and calm yet passionate grandeur of the 
poem entitled Laodamia. If after this, they can still see 
nothing beautiful or great in Mr. Wordsworth's writings, 
we must conclude that their insight into the beauties of 
Spenser and Milton is imaginary, — and that they speak in 
praise of those writers as they do in dispraise of Mr. Words- 
worth, merely by rote. 



* Another poem on this bird mentioned in the former edition was, I 
afterwards found, Mr. Coleridge's ; and I had to congratulate myself ac- 
cordingly on having said what I had, in a previous note, respecting his 
congeniality with Mr. Wordsworth in point of real powers. It is a pity 
that all the poems written by Mr. Coleridge are not collected in one publi- 
cation. 



90 NOTES ON THE 

It may be asked me then, why, with such opinions as I 
entertain of the greatness of Mr. Wordsworth's genius, he 
is treated as he is in some of the verses before us; I an- 
swer, because he abuses that genius so as Milton or 
Spenser never abused it, and so as to endanger those 
great ends of poetry, by which it should assist the uses 
and refresh the spirits of life. From him, to whom much 
is given, much shall be required. Mr. Wordsworth is ca- 
pable of being at the head of a new and great age of 
poetry ; and in point of fact, I do not deny that he is so 
already, as the greatest poet of the present ; — but in point 
of effect, in point of delight and utility, he appears to me 
to have made a mistake unworthy of him, and to have 
sought by eccentricity and by a turning away from so- 
ciety, what he might have obtained by keeping to his 
proper and more neighbourly sphere. Had he written al- 
ways in the spirit of the pieces above-mentioned, his rea- 
ders would have felt nothing but delight and gratitude ; 
tut another spirit interferes, calculated to do good neither 
to their taste nor reflections ; and after having been ele- 
vated and depressed, refreshed and sickened, pained, 
pleased, and tortured, we sometimes close his volumes, as 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 91 

we finish a melancholy day, with feelings that would go to 
sleep in forgetfulness, and full waking faculties too busy 
to suffer it. 

The theory of Mr. Wordsworth^ — if I may venture to 
give in a few words my construction of the curious and, 
in many respects, very masterly preface to the Lyrical 
Ballads, is this ; — that owing to a variety of existing causes, 
among which are the accumulation of men in cities and 
the necessary uniformity of their occupations, — and the 
consequent craving for extraordinary incident, which the 
present state of the world is quick to gratify, the taste of 
society has become so vitiated and so accustomed to gross 
stimulants, such as " frantic novels, sickly and stupid 
German tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant 
stories in verse," as to require the counteraction of some 
simpler and more primitive food, which should restore to 
readers their true tone of enjoyment, and enable them to 
relish once more the beauties of simplicity and nature ;• — 
that, to this purpose, a poet in the present age, who 
looked upon men with his proper eye, as an entertainer 
and instructor, should chuse subjects as far removed as 
possible from artificial excitements, and appeal to the 



92 NOTES ON THE 

great and primary affections of our nature ; — thirdly and 
lastly, that these subjects, to be worthily and effectively 
treated, should be clothed in language equally artless. I 
pass over the contingent parts of the Preface, though 
touching out, as they go, some beautiful ideas respecting 
poets and poetry in general, both because I have neither 
time nor room to consider them, and because they are not 
so immediate to my purpose. I shall merely observe, by 
the way, that Mr. Wordsworth, though he has a fine Mil- 
tonic ear, does not seem to have exercised his reflections 
much on the subject of versification, and must protest 
against that attempt of his to consider perfect poetry as 
not essentially connected with metre, — an innovation, 
which would detract from the poet's properties, and shut 
up one of the finest inlets of his enjoyment and nourishers 
of his power, — the sense of the harmonious. * 

Now the object of the theory here mentioned has clearly 
nothing in the abstract, that can offend the soundest good 
sense or the best poetical ambition. In fact, it is only 



* In the preface to the late edition of his poems, p, 18, Mr. Words- 
worth seems to have tacitly retracted on this head. 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 95 

saying, in other words, that it is high time for poetry in 
general to return to nature and to a natural style, and that 
he will perform a great and useful work to society, who 
shall assist it to do so. I am not falling, by this interpre- 
tation, into the error which Mr. Wordsworth very justly 
deprecates, when he warns his readers against affecting to 
agree with him in terms, when they really differ with him 
in taste. The truth which he tells, however obvious, is 
necessary to be told, and to be told loudly; and he should 
enjoy the praise which he deserves, of having been the 
first, in these times, to proclaim it. But the question is, 
(and he himself puts it at the end of his Preface,) has 
Mr. Wordsworth " attained his object ?" Has he acted 
up to his theory ? Has he brought back that natural 
style, and restored to us those healthy and natural per- 
ceptions, which he justly describes as the proper state of 
our poetical constitution ? I think not. He has shown 
that he could do it, and in many instances he has set the 
example ; but the effect of at least many other passages in 
his poetry, and those, I believe, which he views with most 
partiality, appears to me to be otherwise : it tends, in my 
mind, to go to the other extreme of what he deprecates, 



1 

/ 1 



94 NOTES ON THE 

and to substitute one set of diseased perceptions for ano- 
ther. 

Delight or utility is the aim of the poet. Mr. Words- 
worth, like one who has a true sense of the dignity of his 
profession, would unite both ; and indeed, for their per- 
fect ends, they cannot be separated. He finds then our 
taste for the one vitiated, and our profit of the other de- 
stroyed, and he says to us, " Your complexion is dis- 
eased ; — your blood fevered ; you endeavour to keep up 
your pleasurable sensations by stimulants too violent to 
last, and which must be succeeded by others of still 
greater violence : — this will not do : your mind wants air 
and exercise, — fresh thoughts and natural excitements : — 
up, my friend ; come out with me among the beauties of 
nature and the simplicities of life, and feel the breath of 
heaven about you." — No advice can be better : we feel 
the call instinctively; we get up, accompany the poet 
into his walks, and acknowledge them to be the best and 
most beautiful ; but what do we meet there ? Idiot Boys, 
Mad Mothers, Wandering Jews, Visitations of Ague, 
Indian Women left to die on the road, and Frenzied 
Mariners, who are fated to accost us with tales that 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 95 

almost make one's faculties topple over.* — These are 
his refreshing thoughts, his natural excitements; and 
when you have finished with these, you shall have the 
smallest of your fugitive reflections arrested and em- 
bodied in a long lecture upon a thorn, or a story of a 
duffel-cloak, till thorns and duffel-cloaks absolutely con- 
found you with their importance in life ; — and these are 
his elementary feelings, his calm and counteracting sim- 
plicities. 

Let the reader observe that I am not objecting to these 
subjects in behalf of that cowardly self-love falsely called 
sensibility, or merely because they are of what is termed 
a distressing description, but because they are carried ta 
an excess that defeats the poet's intention, and distresses 
to no purpose. Nor should I select them as exhibiting a 
part of the character of Mr. Wordsworth's writings, ra- 
ther than pass them over as what they really are, the 
defects of a great poet, — if the author himself had not 

* The last of these " idle and extravagant stories' ' was written, it 
seems, by Mr. Coleridge. The pieces, by the way, supplied by this gentle- 
man, have been left out of the late collection of Mr. Wordsworth's 
poems. 



96 NOTES ON THE 

especially invited our attention towards them as part of 
his system of counteraction, and if these and his occa- 
sional puerilities of style, in their disadvantageous effect 
upon his readers, did not involve the whole character and 
influence of his poetry. 

But how is our passion for stimulants to be allayed by 
the substitution of stories like Mr. Wordsworth's ? He 
wishes to turn aside our thirst for extraordinary intelli- 
gence, to more genial sources of interest, and he gives us 
accounts of mothers who have gone mad at the loss of 
their children, of others who have killed their's in the 
most horrible manner, and of hard-hearted masters whose 
imaginations have revenged upon them the curses of the 
poor. In like manner, he would clear up and simplicize 
our thoughts ; and he tells us tales of children that have 
no notion of death, of boys who would halloo to a land- 
scape nobody knew why, and of an hundred inexpressible 
sensations, intended by nature no doubt to affect us, and 
even pleasurably so in the general feeling, but only calcu- 
lated to perplex or sadden us in our attempts at analysis. 
Now it appears to me, that all the craving after intelli- 
gence, which Mr. Wordsworth imagines to be the bane of 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 97 

the present state of society, is a healthy appetite in com- 
parison to these morbid abstractions: the former tends, at 
any rate, to fix the eyes of mankind in a lively manner 
upon the persons that preside over their interests, and to 
keep up a certain demand for knowledge and public im- 
provement ; — the latter, under the guise of interesting us 
in the individuals of our species, turns our thoughts away 
from society and men altogether, and nourishes that ere- 
mitical vagueness of sensation, — that making a business of 
reverie, — that despair of getting to any conclusion to any 
purpose, which is the next step to melancholy or indiffer- 
ence. 

It is with this persuasion, — a persuasion, which has 
not come to me through the want of acquaintance either 
with solitude or society, or with the cares of either, — that 
I liave ventured upon the piece of ridicule in the text. 
Mr, Wordsworth has beautifully told us, that to him 



■ the meanest floVr that blows can give 



Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 

I have no doubt of it; and far be it from me to cast 
stones into the well in which they lie, — to disturb those 

H 



98 NOTES ON THE 

reposing waters,— that freshness at the bottom of warm 
hearts, — those thoughts, which if they are too deep for 
tears, are also, in their best mood, too tranquil even for 
smiles. Far be it also from me to hinder the communica- 
tion of such thoughts to mankind, when they are not sunk 
beyond their proper depth, so as to make one dizzy in 
looking down to them. The walk of Shakspeare is full of 
them ; but he has managed to apply them to their proper 
refreshing purposes; and has given us but one fond re- 
cluse in his whole works, — the melancholy Jaques. Shall 
we forget the attractions which this melancholy philoso- 
pher felt towards another kind of philosopher, whom he 
met in the forest, and who made a jest of every thing ? 
Let us be sure, that this is one of the results of pushing 
our abstractions too far, and of that dangerous art which 
Mr. Wordsworth has claimed for his simpler pieces, — the 
giving importance to actions and situations by our feel- 
ings, instead of adapting our feelings to the importance 
ithey possess. The consequence of this, if carried into a 
system, would be, that we could make any thing or no- 
j thing important, just as diseased or healthy impulses told 
us ; — a straw might awaken in us as many profound, but 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 99 

certainly not as useful reflections, as the fellow-creature 
that lay upon it ; till at last, perplexed between the im- 
portance which every thing had obtained in our imagina- 
tions, and the little use of this new system of equality to 
the action and government of life, we might turn from ele- 
vating to depreciating, — from thinking trifling things im- * 
portant, to thinking important things trifling ; and conclude 
our tale of extremes by closing in with expedience and 

becoming men of the world I would not willingly disturb 

the spirit, in which these remarks are written, by unplea- 
sant allusions : but among the numerous acquaintances of 
Mr. Wordsworth, who have fallen in with his theories, 
perhaps he may be reminded of some, who have exempli- 
fied what I mean. He himself, though marked as govern- 
ment property, may walk about his fields uninjured, from 
the usual simplicity of his life and from very ignorance of what 
he has undergone ; but those who never possessed the real 
wisdom of his simplicity, will hardly retain the virtue ; and 
as in less healthy men, a turn for the worst taste of his re- 
verie would infallibly be symptomatic of a weak state of 
stomach rather than of a fine strength of fancy, so in men 
of less intellect, the imitation of his smaller simplicities is 

h 2 



100 NOTES ON TRE 

little else but an announcement of that vanity and weak- 
ness of mind, which is open to the first skilful corrupter 
that wishes to make use of it. 

With regard to the language in which Mr. Wordsworth 
says that poetry should be written, his mistake seems to 
be this, — that instead of allowing degrees and differences 
in what is poetical, he would have all poetry to be one and 
the same in point of style, and no distinction allowed be- 
tween natural and artificial associations. Nobody will 
contend with him that the language of nature is the best 
of all languages, and that the poet is at his height when 
he can be most fanciful and most feeling in expressions 
the most neighbourly and intelligible ; but the poet may 
sometimes chuse to show his art in a manner more artful, 
and appealing to more particular associations than what 
are shared by the world at large, as those of classical rea- 
ders for instance. It is true, by so doing, he narrows his 
dominion, and gives up the glory of a greater and more 
difficult sway ; but he still rules us by a legitimate title, 
and is still a poet. In the one instance, he must have all 
the properties of the greatest of his profession, — fancy, feel- 
ing, knowledge ; — in the other, he requires less feeling, 



FEAST OF THE POETS. J 01 

and for knowledge may substitute learning ; — a great in- 
feriority no doubt, but still only differing in degree, for 
learning is but the knowledge of books, as knowledge is 
the learning of things. Mr. Wordsworth, to illustrate 
what he means, quotes the following sonnet of Gray, and 
says that " the only part of it, which is of any value, is 
the lines printed in Italics :" * 

In vain to me the smiling mornings shine, 

And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire ; 
The birds in vain their amorous descant join, 

Or cheerful fields resume their green attire. 
These ears alas ! for other notes repine, 

A different object do these eyes require. 
My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine, 

And in my breast the imperfect joys expire ; 
Yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer, 

And new-born pleasure brings to happier men ; 

t We repeat this sonnet with the less hesitation, because it does not ap- 
pear in the usual editions of Gray, though one of the best and most original 
of his compositions. It was written on the death of his friend Richard 
West. By the way, however, he cannot help plagiarizing in the very 
midst of his feelings, — at least, he naturally incurs the suspicion of so doing 
by his general habits of that kind. The last verse is exactly like a saying 
of Solon's, which is thus related in Bacon's Apophthegms : — " Solon, when 
he wept for his son's death, and one said to him, * Weeping will not help,' 
answered, * Alas, therefore I weep, because weeping will not help.' " 



102 NOTES ON THE 

The fields to all their wonted tribute bear ; 

To warm their little loves the birds complain. 
I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear, 

And weep the more because I weep in vain. 

For the lines not marked in Italics much certainly cannot 
be said; but their chief fault, in point of association, and 
as specimens of the secondary species of poetry, is that 
they are misplaced ; otherwise, in a piece professedly 
dealing in metaphorical and classical allusions, they would 
still be poetical, because still fanciful and because still 
referring to natural emotions. But the fairest mode of 
settling the question is to instance distinct pieces of the 
respective kinds, not those in which natural and artificial 
language interfere with each other and only serve to show 
the great superiority of the former over the latter. If 
Shakspeare, for example, had written only those two 
lines, one in the Merchant of Venice, where he speaks of 
moonlight, 

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank, 

and the other in Lear, where the poor old heart-bursting 
king, finding his trembling fingers too weak for him, and 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 103 

yet not forgetting the habitual politeness of his rank, turns 
to somebody and says, 

Pray you undo this button* — thank you, Sir — 

he would have left to all posterity two exquisite proofs of 
his natural greatness in poetry, the one for fancy, the 
other for feeling. But on the other hand, Collins has left 
us little or nothing written in a natural language ; — almost 
the whole of his thoughts are turned upon personifications 
and learned abstractions, and expressed in what may be 
called the learned language of poetry ; yet to say nothing 
of his Odes on the Passions and Manners, there would be 
sufficient in that on the Poetical Character to stamp him a 
true poet; and Mr. Wordsworth, by the way, with an evident 
feeling to this effect, has written an ode to his memory. 
It is the same with what Dry den calls the " admirable 
Grecisms" of Milton.* Milton could write with a natural 
greatness, though not so well as Shakspeare ; but he chose 
also at times to be more artificial, and if he has been so 
too often, it only shows that his genius had less natural 

* Essay on Satire, prefixed to the Juvenal. 



104 NOTES ON THE 

greatness about it and a smaller consciousness of resources, 
not that he had then put off his poetry altogether. Had 
he heard, in his time, of the project for excluding all lan- 
guage and all associations from poetry, but those of na- 
tural passion and humanity, he would have spoken with 
new feelings of the cessation of those ancient oracles, that 
have breathed out upon us a second inspiration ; he would 
have lamented that 

Apollo from his shrine 
Should no more divine, 
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving ; 

and have told us, with a share in the general sorrow, how 

The lonely mountains o'er, 
And the resounding shore, 

A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament ? 
From haunted spring and dale, 
Edg'd with poplar pale, 

The parting Genius is with sighing sent ; 
With flow'r-inwoven tresses torn 
The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thicket mourn. 

If it were merely to keep such verses as these fresh for 
posterity, it would be worth while to protest against the 
exclusion of one species of poetry, merely because it has 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 105 

an elder and nobler brother. But the truth is, the exclu- 
sion would do harm to the cause of poetry in general ; it 
would cut off, as we have seen, a direct portion of the 
skilful and delightful from poetry, — it would hinder a 
number of subjects from being treated poetically, that are 
now recommendable to the world by the process of versi- 
fication ; — it would rid us of one set of pretenders only to 
inundate us with another much more insufferable, the pre- 
tenders to simplicity ; and finally, it would take away from 
the poetical profession something that answers to good 
breeding in manners, and that keeps it clear from rusticity 
and the want of an universal reception ; for Shakspeare, 
who might be thought a counter-example from his want of 
scholastic learning, is in fact a singular example the other 
way, enriching the ground-work of his writings with 
figures and metaphors even to crowding, and evidently 
alive to all the use and dignity of classical allusion : — not 
that a poet is always to be showing his reading or learn- 
ing, or letting the secret of his taste escape him ; but that 
his taste in one respect, if managed like Shakspeare's, 
will teach him to feel what is best and most tasteful in 
others, and enable him to give a simple or passionate ex- 



106 NOTES ON THE 

pression as much perfection on the score of nature, as a 
compounded and elaborate one upon that of art. Mr. 
Wordsworth, with something of a consciousness on this 
head, talks of selection in the very midst of what appears 
to others an absolute contempt of it. Now selection has 
an eye to effect, and is an acknowledgment that what is 
always at hand, though it may be equally natural, is not 
equally pleasing. Who are to be the judges then between 
him and his faults ? Those, I think, who, delighted with 
his nature, and happy to see and to allow that he has me- 
rits of his own superior to his felicitous imitations of 
Milton, (for the latter, after all, though admired by some 
as his real excellence, are only the occasional and per- 
haps unconscious tributes of his admiration,) are yet dis- 
satisfied and mortified with such encounterings of the bell- 
man, as ' Harry Gill and We are Seven f — who think that 
in some of the effusions called ' Moods of My Own Mind,' * 



* This title is omitted in the last edition. — Yet, in objecting to these 
pieces, it is impossible, I think, for any poetical mind not to carried away 
with the enthusiasm of the song to a Skylark, or not to value the pure and 
exquisite sentiment wrapped up in the little piece on a Rainbow. See 
vol. 1, of the late collection, pp. 268 and h 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 107 

he mistakes the commonest process of reflection for its 
result, and the ordinary, every-day musings of any lovet 
of the fields for original thinking ; — who are of opinion, 
in short, that there is an extreme in nature as well as 
in art, and that this extreme, though not equally re- 
moved from the point of perfection, is as different from 
what it ought to be and what nature herself intended it to 
be, as the ragged horse in the desert is to the beautiful 
creature under the Arab, or the dreamer in a hermitage 
to the waking philosopher in society. 

To conclude this inordinate note : Mr. Wordsworth, in 
objecting to one extreme, has gone to another, — the na- 
tural commencement perhaps of all revolutions. He thinks 
us over-active, and would make us over-contemplative, — 
a fault not likely to extend very widely, but which ought 
still to be deprecated for the sake of those to whom it 
would. We are, he thinks, too much crowded together, 
and too subject, in consequence, to high-fevered tastes 
and worldly infections. Granted : — he, on the other hand, 
lives too much apart, and is subject, we think, to low- 
fevered tastes and solitary morbidities ; — but as there is 
health in both of us, suppose both parties strike a bar- 



108 NOTES ON THE 

gain, — he to come among us a little more and get a true 
sense of our action, — we to go out of ourselves a little 
oftener and acquire a taste for his contemplation. We 
will make more holidays into nature with him ; but he, in 
fairness, must earn them, as well as ourselves, by sharing 
our working-days : — we will emerge oftener into his fields, 
sit dangling our legs over his styles, and cultivate a due 
respect for his daffodils ; but he, on the other hand, must 
grow a little better acquainted with our streets, must put 
up with our lawyers, and even find out a heart or so 
among our politicians : — in short, we will recollect that 
we have hearts and brains, and will feel and ponder a 
little more to purify us as spirits ; but he will be good 
enough, in return, to cast an eye on his hands and 
muscles, and consider that the putting these to their pur- 
poses is necessary to complete our part in this world as 
organized bodies. 

Here is the good to be done on both sides ; and as 
society, I believe, would be much bettered in conse- 
quence, so there is no man, I am persuaded, more capa- 
ble than Mr. Wordsworth, upon a better acquaintance 
with society, to have done it the service. Without that 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 109 

acquaintance, his reputation in poetry, though very great, 
may be little more salutary than that of an Empedocles in 
philosophy or a Saint Francis in religion : — with it, he 
might have revived the spirit, the glory, and the utility of 
a Shakspeare.* 



21 And old Peter Pindar turn' d pale, and suppressed, 
With a death-bed sensation, a blasphemous jest. 

It is a pity that this pleasant reprobate had not a little 
more principle in his writings, for he has really a most 

* Since this note, with little variation, was written, Mr. Wordsworth 
has collected his minor pieces into the two volumes so often referred to, 
and has published also two new and large poems, the i Excursion,' and the 
* White Doe of Rylstone.' It does not strike me, however, that I should 
alter it any further in consequence ; though I confess I have risen, if pos- 
sible, in my admiration of this great genius. The White Doe, it is true, 
which seems to have been written some time back, does not appear to be 
among his happiest performances, though containing, as almost all his per- 
formances do, touches of exquisite beauty. It is a narrative poem; and 
there is something in this kind of writing too much out in the world for the 
author's habitual powers. Reverie has been his delight; and the Excur- 
sion, with some objectionable parts on the old score, is a succession of 
noble reveries. 



110 NOTES ON THE 

original vein of humour, — such a mixture of simplicity, 
archness, and power of language, with an air of Irish help- 
lessness running throughout, as is irresistibly amusing, and 
constitutes him a class by himself. He is the Fontaine of 
lampooners. — I know not whether any body ever thought 
of turning to him for his versification ; but the lovers of the 
English heroic would be pleased, as well as surprised, to 
find in his management of it a more easy and various 
music than in much higher poets. 



23 And ivith vine- leaves and Jump-up-and-kiss-me, Tom 
Moore's. 

The meaning of all these intercoronations is not as ob- 
vious, I am afraid, as it might be. The cypress is a fune- 
real evergreen ; — the thistle the Scotch emblem ; — the 
blow-bell another description of thistle, flimsy-headed, 
and liable to have its swelling character altered by the 
first gust of wind ; — and the mandragoras, or mandrake, is 
the old lethargic vegetable, which is associated with so 
many mysterious stories, and said to groan if you offer to 



FEAST OF THE POETS. Ill 

disturb it. Some oak is given to Mr. Campbell for his 
naval odes, and the shamrock to Mr. Moore for that ar- 
dent and disinterested patriotism, which has done him 
such honour, particularly with those who know how much 
it has cost him. The celandine is the flower especially 
chosen by Mr. Wordsworth for his peculiar patronage ; 
and to this is added pine and aloe, the first for its lofty 
growth in mountain solitudes, and the second for its blow- 
ing once in a hundred years. The allusion of the willow 
and of the vine-leaves is obvious ; and turks-cap, creeper, 
penny-royal, and Jump-up-and-kiss-me, want no explana- 
tion, except that the last is one of the variety of names, 
which the fondness of popular admiration, in all countries, 
has lavished upon the beautiful little tri-coloured violet, 
commonly called the Heart's-ease. 

It is pleasant to light upon an universal favourite, whose 
merits answer one's expectation. We know little or no- 
thing of the common flowers among the ancients ; but as 
violets in general have their due mention among the poets 
that have come down to us, it is to be concluded that the 
Heart's-ease could not miss its particular admiration, — if 
indeed it existed among them in its perfection. The mo- 



112 NOTES ON THE 

dern Latin name for it is Flos Jovis or Jove's Flower, — 
an appellation rather too worshipful for its little sparkling 
delicacy, and more suitable to the greatness of an hydran- 
gia or to the diadems of a rhododendron. 

Quaeque per irriguas quserenda Sisymbria valles 
Crescunt, nectendis cum myrto nata coronis ; 
Flosque Jovis varius, folii tricoloris, et ipsi 
Par viola?, nulloque tamen spectatus odore. 

Rapini Hortorum, lib. I. 

With all the beauties in the vallies bred, 
Wild Mint, that's born with myrtle crowns to wed, 
And Jove's own Flow'r, that shares the violet's pride, 
Its want of scent with triple charm supplied. 

The name given it by the Italians is Flammola, the Little 
Flame, an appellation which, since writing this note, I 
have found to be taken from the Greeks, by whom it was 
called Phlox, a Flame. See Cowley's praise of it, and 
the note on the passage, Plantarum Lib. 4. The French 
are perfectly aimable with theirs : — they call it Pensee> a 
Thought, from which comes our word Pansy : — 

" There's rosemary," says poor Ophelia ; " that's for 
remembrance ; — pray you, love, remember ; — and there is 
pansies, — that's for thoughts." Drayton, in his world of 
luxuries, c The Muse's Elysium,' where he fairly stifles you 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 1 1 3 

with sweets, has given, under this name of it, a very 
brilliant image of its effect in a wreath of flowers : — the 
nymph says 

Here damask roses, white and red, 

Out of my lap first take I, 
Which still shall run along the thread ; 

My chiefest flow'r this make I. 
Amongst these roses in a row, 

Next place I pinks in plenty, 
These double-daisies then for show ; 

And will not this be dainty ? 
The pretty Pansy then I'll tye, 

Like stones some chain enchasing ; 
The next to them, their near ally, 

The purple violet placing. 

Nymphal 5th. 

Milton, in his fine way, gives us a picture in a word, 

the Pansy freak'd with jet. 

It is also one of the flowers with which he strews the 
nuptial couch of Adam and Eve. Another of its names 
is Love-in-idleness, under which it has been again cele- 
brated by Shakspeare, to whom we must always return, 
for any thing and for every thing ; — his fairies make potent 
use of it in the Midsummer-Nights' Dream. The whole 
passage is full of such exquisite fancies, mixed with such 

i 



114 NOTES ON THE 

noble expressions and fine suggestions of sentiment, that 
I will indulge myself and lay it before the reader at once, 
that he may not interrupt himself in his chair : — 

Oeeron. My gentle Puck, come hither: — thou rememberest. 
Since once I sat upon a promontory, 
And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back, 
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, 
That the rude sea grew civil at her song, 
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres 
To hear the sea-maid's music? 

Puck. I remember. 

Oberon. That very time I saw (but thou could'st not). 
Flying betwixt the cold earth and the moon, 
Cupid all arm'd: — a certain aim he took 
At a fair vestal, throned by the west, 
And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, 
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts : 
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft 
Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon ; 
And the imperial votaress pass'd on, 
In maiden meditation, fancy free. 
Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell : — 
It feU upon a little western flower, — 
Before, milk-white, — now purple with love's wound, — 
And maidens call it Love-in-idleness. 
Fetch me that flow'r, — the herb I show'd thee onee ; 
The juice of it, on sleeping eyelids laid, 
Will make or man or woman madly dote 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 115 

Upon the next live creature that it sees. 
vFetch me that herb ; and be thou here again, 
Ere the leviathan can swim a league. 

Puck. I'll put a girdle round about the earth 

In forty minutes. 

Act. 2. Sc. 2. 

Besides these names of Love-in-idleness, Pansy, Hearts- 
ease, and Jump*up-and-hiss-me, the tri-coloured violet is 
called also, in various country-places, the herb Trinity, 
Three-faces-under-a-hood, Pink-qf-my-John, Kiss-me-be- 
hind-the-gar den-gate, and Cuddle-me-to-you, which seems 
to have been altered by some nice apprehension into the 
less vivacious request of Cull-me-to-yon. 

In short, the Persians themselves have not a greater 
number of fond appellations for the rose, than the people 
of Europe for the Heart's-ease. For my part, to whom 
gaiety and companionship are more than ordinarily wel- 
come on many accounts, I cannot but speak with grati- 
tude of this little flower, — one of many with which fair 
and dear friends have adorned my prison-house, and the 
one which out-lasted all the rest. 



i2 



11« NOTES ON THE 



23 The "wines were all nectar of different smack, 
To which Muskat was nothing, nor Virginis Lac, 
No, nor Lachryma Christi, though clearly divine, 
Nor Montepidciano, though King of all Wine. 

I do not profess to have tasted these foreign l uxuries^ 
except in the poetry of their admirers. Virginis Lac and 
Lachryma Christi, — Virgin's Milk and Christ's Tears, — 
are names given to two favourite wines by the pious 
Italians, whose familiarity w T ith the objects of their devo- 
tion is as well known as it is natural. The former seems 
to be a white wine, — the latter is of a deep red. Muskat, 
or Moscadell, is so called from the odour of its grape. 
The two latter are mentioned among other Tuscan and 
Neapolitan wines by Redi in his l Bacco in Toscana ;' but 
his favourite is Montepulciano, which at the conclusion 
and climax of the poem, is pronounced by Bacchus him- 
self, in his hour of transport, to be the sovereign li- 
quor : — 



FEAST OF THE POETS* 117 

Onde ogmun, che di Lieo 
Riverente il nome adora, 
Ascolti questo allissimo decreto, 
Che Bassareo pronunzia, e gli dia fe, 
Montepulciano (V ogni Vino e il Re, 

Then all that bow down to the nod, 

Of the care-killing, vintager God, 

Give ear and give faith to his edict divine, 

That Montejmlciano's the King of all Wine. 



24 1 musn't forget though, that Bob, like a gander, 
Would give a " great genius ," — one Mr* Landor ; — 

Mr. Walter Savage Landor, a very worthy person, I be- 
lieve, and author of an epic piece of gossiping called * Ge- 
bir/ upon the strength of which Mr. Southey dedicated 
to him his ' Curse of Renama.' There is really one good 
passage in Gebir about a sea-shell, and the author is one 
of those dealers in eccentric obscurity, who might pro- 
mise to become something if they were boys ; but these 
gentlemen have now been full grown for some time, and 
are equally too old and too stubborn to alter. I forbear 
to rake up the political allusions in a poem which nobody 



118 NOTES ON THE 

knows ; and shall say as little about those in Mr. Southey's 
Joan of Arc, &c. but they are such as should make the 
Laureat and his friends cautious how they resented 
other people's opinions, and dealt about epithets of in- 
dignity. 



25 And Walter looked up too, and begged to propose 
A particular friend of his, — one Mr. Rose. 

Mr. William Stewart Rose, a son of the Right Honour- 
able George Rose, and an intelligent man, but no poet. 
He is author of some gentlemanly, common-place versions 
of old romances, which Mr. Walter Scott describes as 
stories " well told" in modern verse. 



26 < JF or poets, 9 he said, * tuho would cherish their powers, 
And hopd to be deathless, must keep to good hours.' 

This is a truism, which in a luxurious state of society, 
it may not be unnecessary to repeat. At such times, 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 119 

poets are more in request than ever, and being personages 
who can enjoy as well as contribute to enjoyment, are 
more than ever liable to be spoilt. Never was a more 
vulgar mistake than that a true genius for poetry can do 
without study, — meaning by study, a careful research 
into every thing, books as well as men. A genius for 
poetry is nothing but a finer liability to impressions ; but 
what matters the liability, if we do not put ourselves in 
the way of the thoughts and feelings that are to impress 
us ? We must look about for things, if we would acquire 
their images ; we must amass a knowledge of words, if 
we would explain the images to others. Study, of course, 
without genius will not make a poet, any more than eyes 
without sight will get any thing by poring over a micro- 
scope ; but on the other hand, a poet without study shall 
be in the situation of Pizarro at the Peruvian Court ; — - 
with all his powers he shall not be able to write, and his 
common soldiers shall get the better of him in conse- 
quence. From Dryden downwards, our poets do not ap- 
pear to have been very studious men, with the exception 
of Collins and Gray ; and the reading of Dryden himself 
perhaps was rather critical and particular, than general 



120 NOTES ON THE 

and greedy of knowledge. Of the two others, Collins un- 
luckily had a fortune left him, which threw him back into 
idleness; and Gray (with all due respect to his Elegy) 
was rather a man of great taste and reading, than an ori- 
ginal genius*. Of the studious disposition of all our 
greatest poets we have complete evidence. Chaucer's 
eagle in the ' House of Fame' accuses him of being so 
desperate a student, that he takes no heed of any body, 
and reads till he looks stupid : — 

No tidinges comin to the, 

Not of thy very neighbouris 

That dwellen almost at thy doris ; 

Thou herist neither that ne this, 

For whan thy labour al done is, 

And hast made al thy reckininges, 

In stede of reste and of newe thinges 

Thou goest home to thine house anone, 

And al so dombe as any stone 

Thou sittest at anothir boke, 

Tyl fully dasid is thy loke. 

v.140. 

* It would really be curious to ascertain, how much would be due to 
Gray, after a diligent inspection of his obligations to the Greek and Italian 
poets. I doubt whether fifty lines, if so much, — setting aside his Long 
Story and one or two little humourous pieces. He seems to have had a 
talent for ridicule; and must be allowed, on all hands, to have been a 
splendid imitator of the sublime. 



tEAST of THE POETS. 121 

Chaucer however was too true a poet not to read nature 
as well as books, as his writings abundantly testify, both 
in character and description. Milton and Spenser were 
both men of learning, and, what is rarer for poets, men of 
business ; and so indeed was Chaucer. Shakspeare was 
neither a man of learning nor business ; but not to men- 
tion, that Nature in him seems to have been oracular, and 
rather to have spoken by him than from him, it is clear 
that he read every thing that he came near, and perhaps 
the more because he had no learning ; for learning is apt 
to make a man doat upon old books ; and the most ac- 
complished readers, not being so apt at a dead language 
as at their own, linger and brood over their favourite 
classic, at the expense of many a work of information. 

But these names are leading me from my purpose, 
which was rather to remind the poet of the general than 
the particular use of his hours ; and here I might be se- 
duced to return to them, for Chaucer revels in morning 
scenery, and Milton, in one of those prose passages of his so 
impregnated with his poetical spirit, has expressly told us 
that he was an early riser.* But I must fairly put my 
* Apology for Smectymnuus. 



122 NOTES ON THE 

books off the table, lest in being tempted to make a com- 
panion of the reader in all my favourite passages, I should 
convert these notes into what they really were not in- 
tended to be. — The summary of advice to be given to a 
young poet on the present occasion, is this, — that although 
it is a main part of his business to mingle with society, 
for the right apprehension of their manners and passions, 
and indeed for his own refreshment and enjoyment, yet 
he should not so mingle with it as to get hurt by its pres- 
sure, or so as to have his attention distracted by its noise 
or diverted by its seductions. Study should be his busi- 
ness, and society his relaxation, not vice versa ; he should 
divide the one between the fields and his books, and the 
other between society in general, and that sort of friendly 
or domestic company, which cherishes his kindly affec- 
tions, and enables him to keep in harmony with the fel- 
low-creatures whom he is to please and to instruct ; for a 
mere intimacy with what is called the world, not only 
serves to injure the finer simplicity of youth, which pro- 
perly improved, becomes the noblest wisdom of age, but 
by leading him into not the best company and gradually 
fatiguing him with mankind, inclines him to care little for 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 125 

pleasing, and absolutely to despair of instructing ; till at 
last he either looks upon all things around him with a re- 
sentful melancholy, or settles into that contemptuous in- 
difference which is still more fatal to poetry. Dr. Young, we 
see, after a life of courtliness and flattery, revenged himself 
on his expectations by the hypochondriac poem of c Night 
Thoughts :' — Rochester, amidst a round of idleness and 
debauchery, vented his disdain of human nature in sallies 
of ribaldry and starts of the very bitterest satire. There 
is undoubtedly a medium with these men of the world, in 
which you may find ordinary writers of satire, of comedy, 
and of vers de societe, — but these are not the persons in 
question, — they are not the spoilable men ; — in fact, they 
are not poets. 

The application of these remarks is intended to be as 
general as it appears. If Mr. Moore were living as he 
used to do, in the thick of the gay world, I might avail 
myself perhaps of the social and generous character of 
his writings to recommend them to him ; but he has taken 
wing, it seems, to a rural retirement. Indeed, it should 
gratify Mr. Wordsworth to see how very patriarchal most 
of our poets are at present, in this instance. Mr. Moore 



124 NOTES ON THE 

dates from Ashbourne in Derbyshire ; Mr. Campbell from 
Sydenham ; Mr. Scott from Ettrick Forest ; Mr. Southey 
from Grasmere. Mr. Moore, it is true, is understood to 
have been an industrious man, at the time he was sup- 
posed to be idlest ; but the industry of a town life, and 
that of a due intermixture of town and country, are very 
different things. The former is little better than an 
escape from bustle, with the hum of it still ringing about 
your head : it is a business of snatches and make-times ; 
and the only hours that can be barred against interrup- 
tion, are those which are stolen from health. Besides, 
one's virtue on these occasions is apt to recompense its 
pains over much, and the abstinence of the night to help 
itself too largely out of the day. I remember, when I 
was a lad, hanging loosely on society, without a prospect 
and almost without a hope, except that of leaving behind 
me the promise of something poetical, (all that I shall 
now perhaps be able to do, ) I used to think it a fine, studi- 
ous thing to sit up all night reading and writing, with a 
thinking silence about me, and a pot of coffee at the fire- 
side ; but I found out, on a sudden, that I was in the 
habit of rewarding my lucubrations with a proportionate 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 125 

enjoyment of repose, and that I seldom got out of bed 
till two or three in the afternoon. For an admirer of the 
fields and the sunshine, this would not do ; — but I have 
never since been able to get a proper mastery over the 
irregular habits which I suffered to dictate to me at that 
time of life, though b}^ God's blessing I hope to achieve 
it before I have done. 

If there is any living poet, whom from his situation in 
life, from his early genius, and from the complexion of his 
writings, a cordial observer might venture to remind of these 
matters, it is a young nobleman who has been lately rising 
into celebrity, and who, as far as the world is concerned, 
is now moving in the very thick of the lustre. Early his own 
master, and of an elevated rank, Lord Byron has had disad* 
vantages as well as advantages, of no ordinary description. 
If, on the one hand, he came easily and ardently into the 
world, with none of the usual obstructions of fortune, and 
with a readiness on the part of society to admire what he 
should do; on the other, his entrance might have been 
too easy, or his expectations too ardent ; enjoyments 
might have pressed around him too quickly to give him 
time for choice, and too unreservedly to leave him a sense 



126 NOTES ON THE 

of respect ; and at last, with a genius calculated to adorn 
-as well as interest the circles in which he moved, he might 
find it difficult to escape from a round of pleasurable busi- 
ness, in which the self-love of others as well as his own 
habitual acquiescence would help to detain him. Per- 
haps I am assuming too much here, in more senses than 
one ; and I confess, that I have been chiefly led into my 
conclusions respecting him by the general effect of rank 
and fortune at his time of life, and by the general turn of 
mind evinced in his poetry ; but if I am induced to say 
more than I should have done to a writer of less promise, 
it is, — if his lordship will allow me to say so, — because I 
feel a more than ordinary interest in his fame, and have 
had some chords about me so touched by his poetry, as 
to speak whether I will or not. 

The advice then, which I would venture to give his 
lordship, — and which, by the way, as an Englishman and 
a, public writer I have other pretences for giving, in one 
respect, — is briefly this ; — that, in the first place, he would 
habituate his thoughts as much as possible to the com- 
pany of those recorded spirits and lofty countenances of 
public virtue, which elevate an Englishman's recollections, 



8 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 127 

and are the true household deities of his country, — or to 
descend from my epithets, that he would say a little more 
on politics, and appear oftener in Parliament ; — secondly, 
that he would study society, not only in its existing bril- 
liance or its departed grandeur, but in those middle walks 
of life, where he may find the most cordial sum of its hap- 
piness, as well as the soundest concentration of its intelli- 
gence ; — and thirdly, that though he has done a good 
deal already, he would consider it as little until he could 
fully satisfy himself, — or if this be difficult, perhaps im- 
possible, — that he would consider what he has done as 
too full of promise to warrant his resorting at any time to 
a common property in style, or his use of such ordinary 
expedients in composition, as a diligent student of our 
great poets will be too proud to adopt. — By following the 
first piece of advice, he would not only serve his country 
'politically, but to continue speaking of him as a poet, 
might naturally enlarge his stock of ideas, and acquire a 
stronger ambition to serve it poetically ; — by following 
the second, he might be induced to look a little more to 
the useful as well as the beautiful in writing, and be di- 
verted from that tendency to view men and things on the 



128 NOTES ON THE 

dark side, which generally proceeds from a want of ac- 
quaintance with the truly bright one ; — lastly, by follow- 
ing the third, he would do justice to his real turn for 
original feeling and thinking, and be enabled worthily to 
perform what he abundantly promises. 

Lord Byron will see, that by speaking thus of his pro- 
mise rather than his performance, I estimate his good 
sense, as well as his poetry, at no vulgar standard. Had 
I rated him less, I might have praised him more ; at least, 
I might have said nothing of all this to one whom I 
should have considered as arrived at his full growth. But 
though his lordship has done more in his youth than 
many an established writer in his full manhood, and has 
consequently taken his place, beyond a doubt, in the list 
of English Poets, yet I would no more rate what he could 
do at five-and-thirty by what he has done at five-and-twenty, 
than I would consent to have his opinion of me, as an honest 
and friendly critic, determined, when that period arrives, 
by a retrospect to unqualified commendation at present.* 

* Since this note was written, his lordship has shown his mind to be in 
full progress by another poem called l Lara,' which, though the least popular 
of his productions, appears to me to be by far the deepest and fullest. 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 129 

The characteristics of Lord Byron's poetry are a gene- 
ral vein of melancholy, — a fondness for pithy, suggesting, 
and passionate modes of speech, — and an intensity of 
feeling, which appears to seek relief in its own violence. 
Every thing under his operation assumes the fierce glow 
of metal under the hands of the forger : — he produces it 
with unintermitting impatience, and turns, fashions, and 
dismisses it with an air of resentment. What he wants 
in style, and what he may clearly obtain, is a regular re- 
liance on his own mode of speaking, without resorting, 
in his quieter moments, to phrases of common property: — 
what he wants in essential poetry, is fancy as distinguish- 
ed from passion, — Spenser as distinguished from Otway ; 
and it may be anticipated perhaps from this, that he will 
always be rather on the reflecting and passionate side of 
poets, than on the fanciful and creative. 

The Childe Harold was very striking in this respect, 
and evinced a singular independence and determination 
of thinking, with little of those fancies, original or bor- 
rowed, which are so captivating to young writers in gene- 
ral. The Giaour* and Bride of Abydos are two sketches 

* The country gentlemen have been terribly baffled with the titles of 
Lord Byron's productions. Childe Harold sufficiently astounded them ; 



130 NOTES ON THE 

of passion, sparkling and dignified, and abounding in feli- 
citous instances of compression. They are not free however 
from common-place verses, and are disfigured besides by 
a number of strange exotic rhymes, consisting of absolute 
Turkish, — which is really unfair. Of all his lordship's 
productions, I confess I am still most taken with the little 

Abydos, after much dispute, was luckily to be found in a dictionary; but as 
to the Giaour, he was like his namesake in Caliph Vathek, as inexplicable 
as he was attractive; there was no circumventing him and his four vowels. 
For this, in some measure, we have to thank the French, who, to suit their 
own convenience, make as much havoc with people's names as they do with 
the rest of their property. Thus, after having been used to their mode of 
writing the names in the Arabian Nights, and having grown in love, while 
we are boys, with the generosity and magnificence of the Vizier Guy-afar 
(Giafar), we find among the melancholy realities of our manhood that we 
are to call him Jaffer ; — the family name of the Bedreddins is suddenly rec- 
tified into Buddir-ad-Deen ; and our old, though somewhat alarming 
friends, Haroun al Raschid and the Cadi are discovered to be Haroon al 
Rusheed and the Cauzee. — See some of these alterations in Dr. Scott's new 
edition of that ever delightful work. One day or other we shall find our 
mysterious acquaintance the G-i-a-o-u-r under the plain-spoken name of the 
Jower. It is needless to add, that the best way of settling this matter is to 
write all names as nearly as possible to their original spelling. It is our busi- 
ness to find out the pronunciation by itself; but a name is nothing but one 
particular sound, by which one individual is distinguished from another, 
and the French might as well call Pythagoras Peter Jenkins as Peet-a-gore 
(Pythagore). It would have been laudable in Dr. Scott, while he was 
about his anti-gallican emendations, to render the word Genie, which has al- 
most become naturalised, by its proper translation of Genius, 



FEAST OF THE POETS. 131 

effusions at the end of the Childe Harold, It is here, I 
think, that the soul of him is to be found, and that he has 
most given himself up to those natural words and native 
impressions, which are the truest test of poetry. His 
lordship has evidently suffered as well as thought, and 
therefore we have a right to demand originality of him. 
Perhaps it may not have struck him, that a resolution to 
make the most of his past feelings and reflections for the 
multiplication of his poetical resources, and their subse- 
quent use to society, is no mean or mechanical policy, and 
may be called the philosopher's stone of poetry. It is 
thus that we become masters of our destiny, and gain 
possession of a talisman, which shall make even the most 
appalling spirits wait upon our wants and administer to 
our usefulness. 



END OF THE NOTES. 



K 2 



TRANSLATIONS, 



CATULLUS'S RETURN HOME TO THE 
PENINSULA OF SIRMIO. 

CARMEN XXXI. 



O best of all the scatter'd spots that lie 
In sea or lake, — apple of landscape's eye,- 
How gladly do I drop within thy nest, 
With what a sigh of full, contented rest, 



Peninsularum, Sirmio, insularumque 
Ocelle, quascunque in liquentibus stagnis 
Marique vasto fert uterque Neptunus, 
Quam te libenter, quamque Isetus inviso, 



156 CATULLUS' S RETURN HOME. 

Scarce able to believe my journey o'er, 

And that these eyes behold thee safe once more ! 

Oh where's the luxury like a loosen'd heart, 

When the mind, breathing, lays its load apart, — 

When we come home again, tir'd out, and spread 

The greedy limbs o'er all the wislrd-for bed ! 

This, this alone is worth an age of toil. 

Hail, lovely Sirmio ! Hail, paternal soil ! 

Joy, my bright waters, joy ; your master's come ! 

Laugh, every dimple on the cheek of home ! 



Vix mi ipse credens Thyniam atque Bithynos 
Liquisse campos, et videre te in tuto ! 
O quid solutis est beatius curis, 
Cum mens onus reponit, ac peregrino 
Lahore fessi venimus larem ad nostrum, 
Desideratoque acquiescimus lecto ! 
Hoc est quod unum est pro laboribus tantis. 
Salve, o venusta Sirmio, atque hero gaude ! 
Gaudete, vosque Lydiae lacus undae ! 
Ridete, quidquid est domi cachinnorum ! 



CATULLUS TO CORNIFICIUS. 

CARMEN XXXVIII. 

Sick, Cornificius, is thy friend, 

Sick to the heart ; and sees no end 

Of wretched thoughts, that gath'ring fast 

Threaten to wear him out at last. 

And yet you never come and bring — 

Though 'twere the least and easiest thing — 

A comfort in that talk of thine : — 

You vex me : — this, to love like mine ? 

Prithee, a little talk, for ease, for ease, 

Full as the tears of poor Simonides. 

Male est, Cornifici, tuo Catullo, 

Male est, mehercule, et laboriose, 

Et magis magis in dies et horas : 

Quem tu — quod minimum facillimumque est- 

Qua solatus es adlocutione ? 

Irascor tibi : — sic meos amores ? 

Paulum quid lubet adlocutionis, 

Mcestius lacrimis Simonideis. 



ACME AND SEPTIMIUS, OR THE 
ENTIRE AFFECTION. 

FROM CATULLUS. — CARMEN XLV. 



' Oh, Acme love !* Septimius cried, 
As on his lap he held his bride, — 
« If all my heart is not for thee, 
And doats not on thee desperately, 
And if it doat not more and more, 
As desperate heart ne'er did before, 



Acmen Septimius, suos amores, 
Tenens in gremio, c Mea,' inquit, l Acme, 
Ni te perdite amo, atque amare porro 
Omnes sum assidue paratus annos, 
Quantum qui pote plurimum perire, 



ACME AND SEPTIMIUS. 139 

May I be doom'd, on desert ground, 

To meet the lion in his round ! ,# 

He said ; and Love, on tiptoe near him, 
Kind at last, and come to cheer him, f 
Clapp'd his little hands to hear him. 



* The ancients believed, that perjured persons were particularly liable 
to encounter wild beasts. 

f It has been supposed, that the passage here, which is rather obscurely 
expressed in the original, at least to modern apprehensions, alludes to 
some difficulties, with which the lovers had met, and which had hitherto 
prevented their union. 



Solus in Libya, Indiave tosta, 

Caesio veniam obvius leoni.' 

Hoc ut dixit, Amor, sinistram ut ante, 
Dextram sternuit, approbationem. 



140 ACME AND SEPTIMIUS. 

But Acme to the bending youth 

Just dropping back that rosy mouth, 

Kiss'd his reeling, hovering eyes, 

And ■ O my life, my love !' replies, 

* So may our constant service be 

To this one only Deity, 

As with a transport doubly true 

He thrills your Acme's being through !' 

She said ; and Love, on tiptoe near her, 
Kind at last, and come to cheer her, 
Clapp'd his little hands to hear her. 



At Acme, leviter caput reflectens, 
Et dulcis pueri ebrios ocellos 
Illo purpureo ore suaviata, 
< Sic,' inquit, * mea vita, Septimille, 
Huic uno domino usque serviamus, 
Ut multo mihi major acriorque 
Ignis mollibus ardet in medullis. 

Hoc ut dixit, Amor sinistram ut ante, 
Dextram sternuit approbationem. 



ACME AND SEPTIMIUS. 141 

Favour'd thus by heav'n above, 

Their lives are one return of love ; 

For he, poor fellow, so possess'd, 

Is richer than with East and West, — 

And she, in her enamour'd boy, 

Finds all that she can frame of joy. 

Now who has seen, in Love's subjection, 
Two more blest in their connection, 
Or a more entire affection ? 



Nunc ab auspicio bono profecti, 

Mutuis animis amant, amantur. 

Unam Septimius misellus Acmen 

Mavolt quam Syrias Britanniasque ; 

Uno in Septimio fidelis Acme 

Facit delicias libidinesque. 

Quis ullos homines beatiores 

Vidit ? Quis Venerem auspicatiorem ? 



HORACE TO PYRRHA. 

ODE V. LIB. I. 



Pyrrha, what ardent stripling now, 
In one of thy embower'd retreats, 

Would press thee to indulge his vow 
Amidst a world of flow'rs and sweets ? 

For whom are bound thy tresses bright 

With unconcern so exquisite ? 

Alas, how oft shall he bewail 

His fickle stars and faithless gale, 



Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa 
Perfusus liquidis urget odoribus 
Grato, Pyrrha, sub antro ? 
Cui flavam religas comam 
Simplex munditiis ? Heu, quoties fidem 
Mutatosque deos flebit, et aspera 



HORACE TO PYRRHA. 143 

And stare with unaccustom'd eyes, 
When the black winds and waters rise, 
Though now the sunshine hour beguiles 
His bark along thy golden smiles, 
Trusting to see thee, for his play, 
For ever keep smooth holiday ! 
Poor dazzled fools, who bask beside thee ! 
And trust because they never tried thee ! 
For me, and for my dangers past, 
The grateful picture hangs at last 



Nigris aequora ventis 

Emirabitur insolens, 
Qui nunc te fruitur credulus aurea, 
Qui semper vacuam, semper amabilem 
Sperat, nescius aurae 
Fallacis ! Miser i quibus 
Intentata nites ! Me tabula sacer 
Votiva paries indicat uvida 



144 HORACE TO PYRRHA. 

Within the mighty Neptune's fane, 

Who snatch'd me, dripping, from the main. 



Suspendisse potenti 
Vestimenta maris deo. 



PART OF A CHORUS 



SENECA'S TRAGEDY OF THYESTES. 



'Tis not wealth that makes a king, 
Nor the purple's colouring, 
Nor a brow that's bound with gold, 
Nor gates on mighty hinges rolled. 

The king is he, who void of fear, 
Looks abroad with bosom clear ; 



Regem non faciunt opes, 
Non vestis Tyrise color, 
Non frontis nota regise, 
Non auro nitidae fores. 

Rex est, qui posuit metus, 
Et diri mala pectoris ; 



146 PART OF A CHORUS 

Who can tread ambition down, 
Nor be sway'd by smile or frown ; 
Nor for all the treasure cares, 
That mine conceals, or harvest wears, 
Or that golden sands deliver, 
Bosom'd in a glassy river. 

What shall move his placid might ? 
Not the headlong thunderlight, 



Quern non ambitio impotens, 
Et numquam stabilis favor 
Vulgi praecipitis movet. 
Non quidquid fodet occidens ; 
Aut unda Tagus aurea 
Claro devehit alveo ; 
Non quidquid Libycis terit 
Fervens area messibus. 

Quern non concutiet cadens 
Obliqui via fulminis, 



IN SENECA'S THYESTES. 147 

Nor the storm that rushes out 
To snatch the shivering waves about, 
Nor all the shapes of slaughter's trade 
With forward lance or fiery blade. 
Safe, with wisdom for his crown, 
He looks on all things calmly down ; 
He welcomes fate, when fate is near, 
Nor taints his dying breath with fear. 

Grant that all the kings assemble, 
At whose tread the Scythians tremble, — 



Non Eurus rapiens mare, 
Aut saevo rabidus freto, 
Ventosi tumor Adriae ; 
Quem non lancea militis, 
Non strictus domuit chalybs ; 
Qui tuto positus loco, 
Infra se vidit omnia ; 
Occurritque suo libens 
Fato, nee queritur mori. 

Reges conveniant licet, 
Qui sparsos agitant Dahas, — 

l2 



148 PART OF A CHORUS 

Grant that in the train be they, 
Whom the Red-Sea shores obey, 
Where the gems and chrystal caves 
Sparkle up through purple waves; 
Bring with these the Caspian stout, 
Who scorns to shut th' invader out, 
And the daring race that tread 
The rocking of the Danube's bed, 
With those again, where'er they be, 
W T ho, lapp'd in silken luxury, 



Qui rubri vada litoris, 
Et gemmis mare lucidum 
Late sanguineum tenent ; 
Aut qui Caspia fortibus 
Recludunt juga Sarmatis ; 
Certet, Danubii vadum 
Audet qui pedes ingredi ; 
Et quocunque loco jacent 



IN SENECA'S THYESTES. 149 

Feed, to the full, their lordly will ; — 
The noble mind is monarch still. 

No need has he of vulgar force, 
Armour, or arms, or chested horse, 
Nor all the idle darts that light 
From Parthian in his feigned flight, 
Nor whirling rocks from engines thrown, 
That come to shake old cities down. 



Seres vellere nobiles ; — 
Mens regnum bona possidet. 

Nil ullis opus est equis, 
Nil armis, et inertibus 
Telis, quae procul ingerit 
Parthus, cum simulat fugas ; 
Admotis nihil est opus 
Urbes sternere machinis 
Longe saxa rotantibus. 



150 PART OF A CHORUS IN SENECA'S THYESTES. 
No : — to fear not earthly thing, 
This it is that makes the king ; 
And all of us, whoe'er we be, 
May carve us out this royalty. 



Rex est, qui metuit nihil ; 
Hoc regnura sibi quisque dat. 



BACCHUS, OR THE PIRATES. 



FROM HOMER. HYMN V. 



Of Bacchus let me tell a sparkling story. — 
'Twas by the sea-side, on a promontory, 
As like a blooming youth he sat one day, 
His dark locks ripening in the sunny ray, 
And wrapt in a loose cloak of crimson bright, 
Which half gave out his shoulders, broad and white, 
That making up, a ship appear'd at sea, 
Brushing the wine-black billows merrily, — 
A Tuscan trim, and pirates were the crew ; 
A fatal impulse drove them as they flew ; 
For looking hard, and nodding to each other, 
Concluding him, at least, some prince's brother, 
They issued forth along the breezy bay, 
Seiz'd him with jovial hearts, and bore away. 



152 BACCHUS, OR THE PIRATES. 

No sooner were they off, than gath'ring round him 
They mark'd his lovely strength, and would have bound him; 
When lo, instead of this, the ponderous bands 
Snapp'd of themselves from off his legs and hands, 
He, all the while, discovering no surprise, 
But keeping, as before, his calm black eyes. 

At this, the Master, struck beyond the rest, 
Drew them aside, and earnestly addressed ; — 
* O wretched as ye are, have ye your brains, 
And see this being ye would hold with chains ? 
Trust me, the ship will not sustain him long ; 
For either Jove he is, terribly strong, 
Or Neptune, or the silver-shafted King, 
But nothing, sure, resembling mortal thing. 
Land then and set him free, lest by and by 
He call the winds about him, and we die.* 

He said ; and thus, in bitterness of heart 
The Captain answer'd, — t Wretched that thou art J 
Truly we've much to fear, — a favouring gale, 
And all things firm behind the running sail! 



BACCHUS, OR THE PIRATES. 155 

Stick to thy post, and leave these things to men. 
I trust, my friends, before we sail again, 
To touch at iEgypt, Cyprus, or the north, 
And having learnt meantime our prisoner's worth, 
What friends he has, and wealth to what amount, 
To turn this god-send to a right account/ 

He said ; and hauling up the sail and mast, 
Drew the tight vessel stiff before the blast ; 
The sailors, under arms, observe their prize, 
When lo, strange doings interrupt their eyes ; 
For first, a fountain of sweet-smelling wine 
Came gushing o'er the deck with sprightly shine, 
And odours, not of earth, their senses took ; 
The pallid wonder spread from look to look ; 
And then a vine-tree over-ran the sail, 
Its green arms tossing to the pranksome gale ; 
And then an ivy, with a flowering shoot, 
Ran up the mast in rings, and kiss'd the fruit, 
Which here and there the dipping vine let down ; 
On every oar there was a garland crown. — 



154 BACCHUS, OR THE PIRATES. 

But now the crew call'd out ' To shore ! To shore V 

When, leaping backward with an angry roar, 

The dreadful stranger to a lion turn'd ; 

His glaring eyes beneath the hatches burn'd : 

Then rushing forward, he became a bear, 

With fearful change bewildering their despair ; 

And then again a lion, ramping high 

From seat to seat, and looking horribly. 

Heap'd at the stern, and scrambling all along, 

The trembling wretches round the Master throng, 

Who calmly stood, for he had done no wrong. 

Oh, at that minute, to be safe on land ! 

But now, in his own shape, the God's at hand, 

And spurning first the Captain from the side, 

The rest leap'd after in the plunging tide; 

For one and all> as they had done the same, 

The same deserv'd ; and dolphins they became. 

The God then turning to the Master, broke 
In happy-making smiles, and stoutly spoke : — 



BACCHUS, OR THE PIRATES. 155 

' Be of good courage, blest companion mine ; 
Bacchus am I, the roaring God of Wine ; 
And well shall this day be, for thee and thine.' 

And so, all reverence and all joy to thee, 
Son of the sparkle-smiling Semele I 
Must never bard forget thee in his song, 
Who mak'st it flow so sweetly and so strong. 



SONNETS. 



i. 

TO THOMAS BARNES, ESQ. 

WRITTEN FROM HAMPSTEAD. 

Dear Barnes, whose native taste, solid and clear, 
The throng of life has strengthen'd without harm, 
You know the rural feeling, and the charm 

That stillness has for a world-fretted ear :— 

'Tis now deep working all about me here 

With thousand tiny hushings, like the swarm 
Of atom bees, or fairies in alarm, 

Or noise of numerous bliss from distant sphere. 

This charm our evening hours duly restore, — 
Nought heard through all our little, lull'd abode, 

Save the crisp fire, or leaf of book turn'd o'er, 
Or watch-dog, or the ring of frosty road. 

Wants there no other sound then ? — Yes, one more, — 
The voice of friendly visiting, long owed. 



SONNETS. 157 

II. 
TO HAMPSTEAD. 



Sweet upland, to whose walks with fond repair 
Out of thy western slope I took my rise 
Day after day, and on these feverish eyes 

Met the moist fingers of the bathing air, — 

If health, unearned of thee, I may not share, 
Keep it, I pray thee, where my memory lies, 
In thy green lanes, brown dells, and breezy skies, 

Till I return, and find thee doubly fair. 

Wait then my coming, on that lightsome land, 
Health, and the Joy that out of nature springs, 

And Freedom's air-blown locks ; — but stay with me, 
Friendship, frank entering with the cordial hand, 
And Honour, and the Muse with growing ^yings, 
And Love Domestic, smiling equably. 

Surrey Jail, Aug. 27, 181 J. 



1*8 SONNETS. 

III. 
TO THE SAME. 



They tell me, when my tongue grows warm on thee, 
Dear gentle hill, with tresses green and bright, 
That thou art wanting in the finishing sight 

Sweetest of all for summer eye to see ; — 

That whatsoe'er thy charm of spire and tree, 
Of dell wrapped in, or airy-viewing height, 
No water looks from out thy face with light, 

Or waits upon thy walks refreshfully. 

It may be so, — casual though pond or brook : — 
Yet not to me, so full of all that's fair, 

Though fruit-embowered, with fingering sun between, 
Were the divinest fount in Fancy's nook, 
In which the Nymphs sit tying up their hair, 
Their white backs glistening through the myrtles 
green. 

Surrey Jail, Aug. 1814. 



SONNETS. U9 

IV. 
TO THE SAME. 



Winter has reached thee once again at last ; 
And now the rambler, whom thy groves yet please, 
Feels on his house-warm lips the thin air freeze ; 

While in his shrugging neck the resolute blast 

Comes edging; and the leaves, in heaps down cast, 
He shuffles with his hastening foot, and sees 
The cold sky whitening through the wiry trees, 

And sighs to think his loitering noons have passed. 

And do I love thee less to paint thee so ? 
No : this the season is of beauty still 

Doubled at heart, — of smoke with whirling glee 
Uptumbling ever from the blaze below, — 

And home remembered most, — and oh, loved hill, 
The second, and the last, away from thee ! 

Surrey Jail, Nov. 1814. 



160 SONNETS. 

V. 
TO T. M. ALSAGER, ESQ. 

WITH THE AUTHOR'S MINIATURE, ON LEAVING PRISON. 



Some grateful trifle let me leave with you, 
Dear Alsager, whose knock at evening fall, 
And interchange of books, and kindness all, 

Fresh neighbourhood about my prison threw, 

And buds of solace that to friendship grew : — 
Myself it is, who if your study wall 
Has room, would find a nestling corner small, 

To catch, at times, a cordial glance or two. 

May peace be still found there, and evening leisure, 
And that which gives a room both eye and heart, 
The clear, warm fire, that clicks along the coal ; 
And never harsher sound, than the fine pleasure 
Of letter'd friend, or music's mingling art, 
That fetches out in smiles the mutual soul. 



SONNETS. 161 

VI. 
TO HAMPSTEAD. 



The baffled spell, that bound me, is undone ; 

And I have breath'd once more beneath thy sky, 
Lovely-brow'd Hampstead, and my sight have run 

O'er and about thee, and had scarce drawn nigh, 
When I beheld, in momentary sun, 

One of thy hills gleam bright and bosomy, 
Just like that orb of orbs, a human one, 

Let forth by chance upon a lover's eye* 

Forgive me then, that not before I spoke ; 

Since all the comforts, miss'd in close distress, 
With airy nod came up from every part 
O'er-smiling speech; and so I gazed and took 
A long, deep draught of silent freshfulness, 
Ample, and gushing round my fevered heart. 

May, 1815. 

M 



163 SONNETS. 

VII. 
TO THE SAME. 



As one who, after long and far-spent years, 
Comes on his mistress in an hour of sleep, 
And half surprised that he can silence keep ? 

Stands smiling o'er her through a flash of tears, 

To see how sweet and self-same she appears ; 
Till at his touch, with little moving creep 
Of joy, she wakes from out her calmness deep, 

And then his heart finds voice, and dances round her ears; 

So I, first coming on my haunts again, 
In pause and stillness of the early prime, 
Stood thinking of the past and present time, 

With earnest eyesight, scarcely crossed with pain ; 
Till the fresh moving leaves, and startling birds, 
Loosen' d my long-suspended breath in words. 

May, 1815. 



POLITICS AND POETICS; 

OR, THE 

DESPERATE SITUATION OF A JOURNALIST UNHAPPILY 
SMITTEN WITH THE LOVE OF RHYME. * 



Again I stop, — again the toil refuse ! 

Away, for pity's sake, distracting Muse ; 

Nor thus come smiling with thy bridal tricks 

Between my studious face and politics. 

Is it for thee to mock the frowns of fate ? 

Look round, look round, and mark my desperate state : 

* These lines were omitted in the first edition, on account of the ge- 
neral indifference of the versification ; but as they have been thought to 
resemble that mixture of fancy and familiarity, which the public have ap- 
proved in the * Feast of the Poets,' and as they involve also the anticipa- 
tion of an event in the writer's life, which afterwards took place, and which 
he can look back upon, thank Heaven, without blushing for the manner in 
which lie anticipated it, they are here for the greater part reprinted, 

M 2 



164 POLITICS AND POETICS. 

Cannot thy gifted eyes a sight behold, 

That might have quelled the Lesbian bard of old, 

And made the blood of Dante's self run cold ? 



Lo, first, this table spread with fearful books, 
In which whoe'er can help it never looks, — 
Letters to Lords, Remarks, Reflections, Hints, 
Lives, snatch'd a moment from the public prints, — 
Pamphlets to prove, on pain of our undoing, 
That rags are wealth, and reformation ruin, 
Journals, and briefs, and bills, and laws of libel, 
And bloated and blood-red, the placeman's annual Bible. 

Scarce from the load, as from a heap of lead, 
My poor old Homer shows his living head ; 
Milton, in sullen darkness, yields to fate, 
And Tasso groans beneath the courtly weight ; 
Horace alone (the rogue !) his doom has miss'd, 
And lies at ease upon the Pension List. 

Round these, in tall imaginary chairs, 
Imps ever grinning, sit my daily cares, — 



POLITICS AND POETICS. 165 

Distastes, delays, dislikings to begin, 
Gnawings of pen, and kneadings of the chin. 
Here the Blue Daemon keeps his constant stir, 
Who makes a man his own barometer ; 
There Nightmare, horrid mass ! unfeatured heap ! 
Prepares to seize me if I fall asleep ; 
And there, with hands that grasp one's very soul, 
Frowns Head-ache, scalper of the studious poll, — 
Head-ache, who lurks at noon about the courts, 
And whets his tomahawk on East's Reports. 

Chief of this social game, behind me stands, 
Pale, peevish, periwigg'd, with itching hands, 
A goblin double-tail'd, and cloak'd in black, 
Who, while Pm gravely thinking, bites my back. 
Around his head flits many a harpy shape, 
With jaws of parchment and long hairs of tape, 
Threatening to pounce, and turn whate'er I write 
With their own venom into foul despite. 
Let me but name the court, they swear, and curse, 
And din me with hard names ; and what is worse, 
'Tis now three times that I have miss'd my purse. 



166 POLITICS AND POETICS, 

No wonder poor Torquato went distracted, 
On whose galPd senses just such pranks were acted, 
When the small tyrant, — God knows on what ground, — 
With dungeons and with doctors hemm'd him round.* 



* See Black's Life of Torquato Tasso, which, if it does not evince a 
mature judgment in point of style, is written at once with great accuracy 
of investigation and enthusiasm of sympathy. Mr. Black, in opposition to 
Milton's, Seracci's, and indeed the general opinion, thinks that the misfor- 
tunes experienced by this illustrious poet at the court of Ferrara were not 
owing to a passion between him and the Princess Leonora; and perhaps 
the belief in it has been little more than a guess, not entirely destitute of 
internal evidence, and certainly not unfounded either in human nature, in 
the character of the poet himself, or in the general destiny of princesses. 
The reasons why Tasso might not talk more explicitly to the world on 
such a subject, are obvious. I believe it was not ascertained till lately, that 
the horrible persecution experienced by Baron Trenk from Frederick the 
Second of Prussia, was owing to an early attachment with which he had 
inspired the king's sister Amelia, and which that noble-minded and unfor- 
tunate princess carried with her to the grave. The interview that took 
place between the Baron and his royal Mistress in their old age, after 
never having seen each other since their youth, is one of the most affecting 
incidents in the history of the human heart. Leonora, like the Princess 
Amelia, died unmarried ; — but, at all events, whether she had or had not 
any thing to do with the poet's destiny, one can never think without indig- 
nation of the state to which he was reduced by her brother the Duke of Fer- 
rara, who, whatever was the cause of his dislike, chose to regard his morbid 
sensibility as madness, and not only locked him up, but drenched him with 
nauseous medicines. It is truly humiliating to hear the great poet, in spite 



POLITICS AND POETICS. 167 

Last, but not least, (methinks I see him now !) 
With stare expectant, and a ragged brow, 
Comes the foul fiend, who,— let it rain or shine, 
Let it be clear or cloudy, foul or fine, 
Or freezing, thawing, drizzling, hailing, snowing, 
Or mild, or warm, or hot, or bleak and blowing, 
Or damp, or dry, or dull, or sharp, or sloppy, 
Is sure to come, — the Devil who comes for copy ! 



of his natural highmindedness, petitioning to be relieved from his inordi- 
nate quantity of physic, or promising, in the event of obtaining a smaltin- 
dulgence, to take it more patiently. One of the miseries with which 
persecution and a diseased fancy conspired to torment him during his con- 
finement in Saint Anne's Hospital, was an idea that he was haunted by a 
mischievous little goblin, who tumbled his papers about, stole his money, 
and deranged his contemplations. The following wild and simple touch 
of pathos is supposed to have been written by him during these afflic- 
tions : — 

Tu, che ne vai in Pindo, 

Ivi pende mia cetra ad un cipresso, 
Salutala in mio nome, e dille poi, 

Ch'io son dagli anni, e da fortuna oppresso. 



Thou, who to Pindus tak'st thy way, 
Where my harp hangs upon a cypress tree, 

Salute it in my name, and say, 
That I am old, and full of misery. 



168 POLITICS AND POETICS- 

But see ! e'en now the Muse's charm prevails ; 
The shapes are moved ; the stricken circle fails ; 
With backward grins of malice they retire, 
Scared by her seraph looks, and smiles of fire: 
That instant as the hindmost shuts the door, 
The bursting sunshine smites the window'd floor ; 
Bursts too, on every side, the sparkling sound 
Of birds abroad, — the elastic spirits bound, 
And the fresh mirth of morning breathes around : 
Away, ye clouds ! — dull politics, give place ! — 
Off, cares, and wants, and threats, and all the race 
Of foes to freedom, and to laurelled leisure ! 
To day is for the Muse — and dancing Pleasure ! 

Oh for a seat in some poetic nook, 
Just hid with trees, and sparkling with a brook, 
Where through the quivering boughs the sun -beams shoot 
Their arrowy diamonds upon flower and fruit, 
While stealing airs come fuming o'er the stream, 
And lull the fancy to a waking dream ! 
There shouldst thou come, O first of my desires, 
What time the noon had spent its fiercer fires, 






POLITICS AND POETICS. 169 

And all the bower, with chequer'd shadows strown, 

Glow'd with a mellow twilight of its own ; 

There shouldst thou come, and there sometimes with thee 

Might deign repair the staid Philosophy, 

To taste thy freshening brook, and trim thy groves, 

And tell us what good task true glory loves. 

I see it now ! I pierce the fairy glade, 

And feel the enclosing influence of the shade : — 

A thousand forms, that sport on summer eves, 

Glance through the light, and whisper in the leaves, 

While every bough seems nodding with a sprite, 

And every air seems hushing the delight, 

And the calm bliss, fix'd on itself a while, 

Dimples the unconscious lips into a smile. 

Anon strange music breathes ; — the fairies show 

Their pranksome crowd ; and in grave order go 

Beside the water, singing, small and clear, 

New harmonies unknown to mortal ear, 

Caught upon moonlight nights from some nigh-wander 

ing sphere. 
I turn to thee, and listen with fix'd eyes, 
And feel my spirits mount on winged ecstasies. 



170 POLITICS AND POETICS. 

In vain. — For now with looks that doubly burn, 
Shamed of their late defeat, ray foes return. 
They know their foil is short ; — and shorter still, 
The bliss that waits upon the Muse's will. 
Back to their seats they rush, and reassume 
Their ghastly rights, and sadden all the room. 
O'er ears and brain the bursting wrath descends, 
Cabals, mis-statements, noise of private ends, 
Doubts, hazards, crosses, cloud-compelling vapours, 
With dire necessity to read the papers, 
Judicial slaps that would have stung Saint Paul, 
Costs, pityings, warnings, wits, — and worse than all, 
(Oh for a dose of Thelwall or of poppy !) 
The fiend, the punctual fiend, that bawls for copy ! 
Full in the midst, like that Gorgonian spell, 
Whose ravening features glared collected hell, 
The well-wigg'd pest his curling horror shakes, 
And & fourth snap of threatening vengeance takes ! 
At that dread sight, the Muse at last turns pale, 
Freedom and Fiction's self no more avail, 
And lo, my Bower of Bliss is turn'd into a jail ! 

What then ? What then ? my better genius cries : — 
Scandals and jails ! — All these you may despise, 



POLITICS AND POETICS. 171 

The enduring soul, that to keep others free 
Dares to give up its darling liberty, 
Lives wheresoe'er its countrymen applaud, 
And in their great enlargement walks abroad : 
But toils alone, and struggles every hour 
Against the insatiate, gold-flush'd Lust of Power, 
Can keep the fainting Virtue of thy land 
From the rank slaves, that gather round his hand. 
Be poor in purse, and law will soon undo thee ; 
Be poor in soul, and self-contempt will rue thee. 

I yield, I yield. — Once more I turn to you, 
Harsh politics, and once more bid adieu 
To the soft dreaming of the Muse's bowers, 
Their sun-streak'd fruits, and fairy-painted flowers* 
Farewell, for gentler times, ye laurell'd shades ! 
Farewell, ye sparkling brooks, and haunted glades, 
Where the trim shapes, that bathe in moonlight eves, 
Glance through the light, and whisper in the leaves, 
While every bough seems nodding with a sprite, 
And every air seems hushing the delight. 
Farewell, farewell, dear Muse, and all thy pleasure ! 
He conquers ease, who would be crown'd with leisure- 

1811. 



SONG. 

(to the air of "the de'il came fiddling through the town/') 



Oh, one that I know is a knavish lass, 

Though she looks so sweet and simple ; 
Her eyes there are none can safely pass, 

And it's wrong to trust her dimple. 
So taking the jade was by nature made, 

So finish'd in all fine thieving, 
She'll e'en look away what you wanted to say, 

And smile you out of your grieving. 

To see her, for instance, go down a dance, 

You'd think you sat securely, 
For there's nothing about her of forward France, 

And nothing done over demurely ; 
But lord ! she goes with so blithe a repose, 

And comes so shapely about you, 
That ere you're aware, with a glance and an air, 

She whisks your heart from out you. 



NATIONAL SONG. 



Hail, England, dear England, true Queen of the West, 
With thy fair swelling bosom and ever-green vest, 
How nobly thou sitt'st in thine own steady light, ~\ 

On the left of thee Freedom, and Truth on the right, 
While the clouds, at thy smile, break apart, and turn 
bright ! > 

The Muses, full voiced, half encircle the seat, 
And Ocean comes kissing thy princely white feet. 

All hail! all hail! 
All hail to the beauty, immortal and free, 
The only true goddess that rose from the sea. 



Warm-hearted, high-thoughted, what union is thine 
Of gentle affections and genius divine ! 
Thy sons are true men, fit to battle with care ; 
Thy daughters true women, home-loving and fair, 
With figures unequall'd, and blushes as rare : 



1 

i 



174 NATIONAL SONG, 

E'en the ground takes a virtue, that's trodden by thee, 

And the slave, that but touches it, starts, and is free. 

All hail! all hail! 
All hail, Queen of Queens, there's no monarch beside, 
But in ruling as thou dost, would double his pride. 



A THOUGHT ON MUSIC. 

SUGGESTED EY A PRIVATE CONCERT, MAY 13, 1815. 



To sit with downward listening, and cross'd knee, 
Half conscious, half unconscious, of the throng 
Of fellow-ears, and hear the well-met skill 
Of fine musicians, — the glib ivory 
Twinkling with numerous prevalence, — the snatch 
Of brief and birdy flute, that leaps apart, — 
Giddy violins, that do whate'er they please, — 
And sobering all with circling manliness, 
The bass, uprolling deep and voluble ; — 
Well may the sickliest thought, that keeps its home 
In a sad heart, give gentle way for once, 
And quitting its pain-anchored hold, put forth 
On that sweet sea of many-billowed sound, 
Floating and floating in a dreamy lapse, 
Like a half-sleeper in a summer boat, 
Till heaven seems near, and angels travelling by. 



176 A THOUGHT ON MUSIC. 

For not the notes alone, or new-found air, 
Or structure of elaborate harmonies, 
With steps that to the waiting treble climb, 
Suffice a true-touch'd ear. To that will come 
Out of the very vagueness of the joy 
A shaping and a sense of things beyond us, 
Great things and voices great : nor will it reckon 
Sounds, that so wake up the fond-hearted air, 
To be the unmeaning raptures they are held, 
Or mere suggestions of our human feeling, 
Sorrow, or mirth, or triumph. Infinite things 
There are, both small and great, whose worth were lost 
On us alone, — the flies with lavish plumes, — 
The starry-showering snow, — the tints and shapes 
That hide about the flowers, — gigantic trees, 
That crowd for miles up mountain solitudes, 
As on the steps of some great natural temple, 
To view the godlike sun : — nor have the clouds 
Only one face, but on the side of heaven 
Keep ever gorgeous beds of golden light. 

Part then alone we hear, as part we see : 
And in this music, lovely things of air 



A THOUGHT ON MUSIC. 177 

May find a sympathy of heart or tongue, 
Which shook perhaps the master, when he wrote, 
With what he knew not, — meanings exquisite,— 
Thrillings, that have their answering chords in heaven, — 
Perhaps a language well-tuned hearts shall know 
In that blest air, and thus in pipe and string 
Left by angelic mouths to lure us thither. 



THE END. 



Printed by S. Hamilton, Weybridge, Surrey. 



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